Communicating with Trump Fans

 

How anyone can look at that travesty and see a hero is beyond me.  But recently I've been interacting with a couple of Trump fans.  They're still "all-in" on their orange god.  I guess if you were already so brain-damaged as to have been captivated by him in the first place, the fact that he has betrayed them on the Epstein files (he was going to expose the Democratic child-molesting/eating cabal remember); that he betrayed them on stopping the "Forever Wars,"; that he has shown callous indifference to the sufferings of non-rich people from the price inflation that his own bungling stupidity has caused; and he spends the rest of his time making an ass of himself with the various monuments and institutions in Washington DC (from the reflecting pool to the Kennedy Centre), ... well, none of that is going to alter these shit-heads' belief system.

Even as Canadians, in a country being economically attacked by the imbecile (who stupidly claims that we've been "ripping off" the USA through unfair trade deals and practices) they're incapable of pulling their heads from their shit-filled asses.

Conservatives of this stripe have an astonishing ability to attach all manner of nefarious traits to their designated enemies and to transform them into something like Emmanuel Goldstein of 1984's "two-minute hate" infamy.  In this case, the torch has been passed by the pretty-boy-faggot-traitor Justin Trudeau, to the faggot-traitor Mark Carney.  And all sorts of cataclysmic horrors will happen if their political opponents win an election.  (Starting with the other side's victory being based on fraud by definition.)  Because "liberals" and "socialists" (they're the same thing really) are deranged, perverted, totally incompetent, hateful monsters.*

 Let's start with the latest thing I heard.  I mentioned needing a raise to deal with the rising cost of living.  The Trump fan blamed the current inflation on Mark Carney and "all his spending."  Off-balance, and seeking to enter into an actual debate with the fuckhead, I said "Well, whatever.  I'm not getting any of his spending" and extracted myself from the situation.

The thing about these lunatics is that their hatred of Carney is so disconnected from reality, and so totally based on willfully fraudulent premises, that even I, who despises Carney, finds myself defending him (sort of).

The whole world is dealing with inflation.  The Pandemic (and the price-gouging that corrupt oligarchic firms used it as an excuse for) way back in 2020, were followed by the removal of Russian fuel from world markets and the loss of fertilizers and grains caused by the NATO-Ukraine proxy war against Russia.  As well, the trillions and trillions of dollars pumped into the economy since 2008 ("Quantitative Easing" and other bail-outs) has helped the oligarchy to buy-up assets of all sorts, including housing.

Canada's inflation is worse than other G-7 countries.  But none of those lying assholes in the right-wing media would dare point their fingers at our oligopolistic sectors like groceries and telecoms.  If Carney is to be blamed for anything it's for continuing to coddle and enable those parasites.

Next, I was treated to a video of some boorish asshole fishing in a river saying that Canadians need to remember that Trump isn't their president.  They live in Canada.  And they should expunge the notion that the deranged leader of the super-power to our south has been slapping us with tariffs and threats of more tariffs, oh, and threats of annexation.  Yes (says the arrogant fuck), all Trump has done is expose Canada's vulnerability.  The evil, stupid Liberals got us into this mess by having put all Canada's eggs in the US-American basket.  Perhaps the dunce is too young to know that it was the conservative Brian Mulroney who got the first Free Trade deal done.  The whole thing has been a bipartisan, Liberal-Conservative affair, backed by all the business groups and the corporate media.  It's only CONSISTENTLY been resisted by leftists.  But now, it seems, a few delusional, ignorant conservatives are claiming the prescience to see that diversifying our trading partners and developing some economic autonomy are good things.

Also, apparently the whole trade-war thing is entirely Carney's fault.  He's manufactured it out of whole-cloth to hoodwink the Canadian sheeple into supporting him.  Carney (the Machiavellian) is making the innocent lamb Trump the scapegoat to brainwash us into trusting him.  [That is some metaphor mixing I just did there!  Making a lamb a goat!]

I was shown a video of the piece-of-shit whoever that Trump had negotiating with Canada, saying (without evidence) that the Canadians, at the last minute, out-of-the-blue, came out with all sorts of brazen new demands.  In the comments section, a gathering of the usual human garbage were spewing nonsense about forcing Carney to show the proof of his own claims of US-American last-minute additions.  They typed this drivel, obviously sitting in their own shit in front of their computers, blissfully oblivious to the fact that the God-Emperor Trump's negotiator wasn't showing any evidence for his claims.

The fact that Carney had made numerous concessions to Trump (including cancelling plans to tax internet media companies like Meta and "X" and Google) and agreeing to his insane demands for spending 5% of GDP on weapons, ... all down the memory-hole.

Carney is a socialist.  Carney who is privatizing our airports and other public infrastructure, lowing corporate taxes to 6%, pretty much removing all environmental restrictions on the fossil-fuels sector, and gutting First Nations' right to approval over projects on their lands.

"Intelligence" and "stupidity" are amorphous concepts.  Some people can possess great quantities of both.  Most people have more of the former and less of the latter.  But some people are, overall, stupid.  You can tell just by listening to them.  And humans exist on a spectrum from essentially stupid to sort of genius.  And we will never be rid of the sorts of mistakes of nature that in this day and age look at a fat, deranged, pedophile-rapist, psychopathic, ego-maniacal degenerate like Trump and see GOD.  At one time these pieces of human garbage were politically marginal.  Now, as society decays, they are more abundant.  

 

*Here in Toronto, Olivia Chow stands for all that is bad and deceitful, and stupid, and gay, and incompetent, and etc.,  Olivia Chow is the worst mayor in the history of mayors anywhere.  She has DESTROYED this city.  In my opinion, Chow is a VERY dim light bulb who has something of a kindly nature and has decent advisors.  She's done some quite good things for Toronto and some quite bad things.  And I take the opinions about her from stupid assholes who still revere the memory of international laughingstock, lazy, stupid, drunken, lying, shit-fuck Rob Ford, with all the respect that they are due. 

Two Disagreements

 

Yesterday I happened to read two articles that I disagreed with.  The first one, was a little difficult for me.  It was written by a Palestinian and it was how they said we shouldn't use the word "terrorist" against the Netanyahu government or the "settlers" illegally pushing West Bank Palestinians off their land.

Settler colonial violence is, of course, real and terrifying, but “terrorism” is the wrong framework for understanding and confronting it, because it was designed to serve imperial designs and make settler violence look like an aberration. In this way, the label of “Israeli terrorism” often misleadingly characterizes settler violence as confined to the Israeli far right, even though it’s the product of a broad Israeli consensus and a systemic feature of Israel’s colonial regime.

...

The terrorism framework did not emerge from positive or emancipatory values, but has been exclusively weaponized against oppressed and marginalized peoples in the service of imperial agendas. While in the 1960s, the terrorism framing was used by western imperial interests against anti-colonial struggles (Algeria, South Africa, Vietnam, to name a few), the post 9/11 global “terrorism” narrative shifted to focus on a new “global enemy” — Islamic fundamentalism — and used to justify military occupations and atrocities across the world under the banner of the “War on Terror.” More dangerously, it was used to build a legal arsenal encroaching on people’s rights and freedoms, undermining the rule of law and peoples’ sovereignty under the cover of legality. 

...

There is a reason why terrorism has no agreed-upon definition under international law. It is a political tool whose meaning has been shaped by those with the power to wield it. A framework built and weaponized by imperial powers against colonized peoples cannot become the tool through which we dismantle colonial violence.

Another danger of embracing the “terrorism” label for settlers is that it exceptionalizes their violence, turning masked settlers who kill Palestinians, burn their homes, and attack their villages into a violent fringe — “bad apples” supposedly detached from an otherwise legitimate Israeli state and Zionist establishment.

...

The inconvenient reality is that decades of international impunity are the central reason why the colonial settlers’ movement has reached such levels of unleashed violence today. Calling settlers “terrorists” offers another escape from that accountability: it isolates individual perpetrators while leaving intact the system that arms, protects, and enables them.

I believe the “terrorism” label should not be used for any group, globally. West Bank settler violence is state-backed settler colonial violence. It is part and parcel of a century-long Zionist settler colonial project. Confronting this violence means confronting the institutions, policies, and structures that produce it — not simply the individuals who carry it out. Call it what it is.

 

Some valid points.  But I disagree.  Yes, "terrorism" is an amorphous, politically subjective term.  But it's also a powerful one.  It has penetrated the psyche of Western consciousness.  And if it can be thrown back in the faces of those who cynically employed it in the first place, then we should do so.  Especially since, while there might not be a genuine, legal definition of "terrorism" there are serviceable definitions of the word:

Concepts of political discourse are hardly models of clarity, but there is general agreement as to what constitutes terrorism. As a point of departure we may take the official United States Code:

 

“act of terrorism” means an activity that — (A) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life that is a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State; and (B) appears to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by assassination or kidnapping.³

The concept is not precisely delimited. First, the boundary between international terrorism and aggression is not always clear. On this matter, let us give the benefit of the doubt to the United States and its clients: if they reject the charge of aggression in the case of some act of international violence, we will take it to fall under the lesser crime of terrorism. There is also disagreement over the distinction between terrorism and retaliation or legitimate resistance, to which we return.

US sources also provide more succinct definitions of “terrorism.” A US Army manual on countering terrorism defines it as “the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious or ideological in nature. This is done through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear.”

And, it requires no stretch of the imagination to see how Israeli behaviour aligns with this definition.  I said that the writer had some good, valid points.  But there's something to be said for the opposite position and I think there are better uses of anti-genocide people's time than debating the terminology to describe zio-nazi behaviour.

 

The other article employs Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) to attempt to debunk the idea that rising yields in the bond market signify the weakness of the Trump regime's erratic political-economic policies and that these higher yields will put some sort of break on Trump's mismanagement of the world system.

Commentators point to large federal deficits, growing public debt, and the volume of Treasury securities coming onto the market. From this perspective, higher yields are the market’s response to excessive government borrowing, and the Trump administration’s policy amounts to fiscal recklessness. This interpretation rests on an old and misleading conception of financial markets. It treats government and private borrowers as competing for a limited pool of savings, so that larger deficits necessarily drive interest rates upward. But interest rates in a modern monetary economy are not determined in this way. The Federal Reserve (Fed) directly sets the short-term policy rate and strongly influences the entire yield curve through changes in the composition and size of its balance sheet and through expectations about future rates.

The current rise in long-term rates is better understood from this monetary perspective. Inflation remains above the Fed’s 2 percent target, and the energy shock associated with the Iran war has reinforced fears that inflation will persist. These fears are exaggerated. Inflation above 2 percent is not, by itself, evidence of an inflationary crisis, particularly when there is no distributive conflict capable of generating a self-sustaining wage-price spiral. The deeper problem is the Fed’s commitment to an excessively low inflation target.

This goes against the argument of Jack Rasmus (same thing here or here) which is that the bond markets are genuinely worried about the over-extension of the US dollar and that the nation's ability to raise funds without simply printing it is going to limit Trump's ability to continue his wars and for the USA as a whole to maintain its standard of living as a devalued dollar makes imports more expensive.

 

The US has continued to run massive budget deficits averaging more than $2 trillion a year since 2020. In past decades before 2000, the US used to cover its deficits with economic growth and tax revenues. But growth has slowed sharply since 2020, on average barely 2% per year, and tax cuts for corporations and investors have accelerated. So Sales of US Treasuries have been key to financing the annual $2 trillion plus US budget deficit.

Should foreign buyers of Treasuries continue to buy fewer Treasuries, like China has been doing, or worse, start selling off their Treasuries—how will the US finance its annual $2 trillion and rising budget deficit?

The US will have to either cut spending, raise taxes, or sell more Treasuries to domestic US buyers. But to sell more domestically, it will have to entice US domestic buyers to do so. How? By increasing the interest rate on the Treasuries it will pay them if they buy more.

Which brings us back to the recent events regarding Japan, its Yen, and its increasingly competitive Japan government bond rates that offer interest rates to buyers nearly equivalent to US Treasury bond rates.

Japan is about to sharply reduce its purchases of US Treasuries. That means less global demand for US Treasuries. At the same time, Japan has started selling off some of its $1.1 trillion hoard of Treasuries. That increases the supply of Treasuries globally. Lower demand higher supply both mean falling prices for US Treasuries and, in turn, rising long term US bond interest rates.

...

To assist Japan—and discourage it from selling even more US Treasuries—US Treasury Secretary Bessent last month intervened in global currency markets and started buying Yen to assist Japan trying to prop up the value (price) of its Yen.  But that’s just the appearance. The real Bessent objective is to assist Japan to prevent it from selling off even more US Treasuries.

In an interesting twist, Bessent didn’t enter the global currency market to buy Yen with dollars. He used the US Treasury’s stock of Euros currency to buy Yen. That may have temporarily helped Japan, but it undermined the value of the Euro and European economies. That did not make the Europeans too happy.

On August 30, 2026 Bessent bragged the US action had stabilized the Yen. But evidence suggests otherwise. The Yen is likely to continue to fall below the benchmark Yen-Dollar exchange of 160 to the $1.  When it does, Japan will likely dump (sell) more of its US Treasury holdings in order to buy more of its currency to prop it up. That means Japan, like China, will reduce its holdings of US securities well below the $90 billion it already expended since July. If it’s selling Treasuries it’s certainly not going to buy more. So both Japan’s demand and supply of Treasuries will push up US long term Treasury bond interest rates.  US long bond rates are already at 5.3%! They’ll likely go higher now.

That will pull up US mortgage rates. So US consumers can forget about US housing affordability before the US November elections. It’ll get worse, not better. It’s already happening.

 

Rasmus says more about various countries pulling out of US Treasuries, as well as the enormous financial appetite of the AI debacle.  Obviously, the financial markets aren't thinking of MMT, and neither do any Western governments.  Whether they did or not is irrelevant.  They don't have the well-being of ordinary people at heart.  It's "heads they win, tails we lose" as usual. 

Canada-USA trade at the end of European Imperialism

 

I don't know why anybody was bothering trying to seal a deal with Trump since his solemn word isn't worth air it's spoken on.  But Trump apparently demanded some last minute surrenders of essential national sovereignty and even the lickspittle Carney was forced to stand up to him.

I'm not a big fan of Canada, but it's a tad better than the USA, so I'm opposed to assimilation.  I suspect the vast majority of Canadians are too.  Whether US-Americans have the stomach for the conquest and extended occupation of Canada is also an open question.

Whether members of the US military would want to attack Canada, ... in their eyes a loyal, but sovereign ally, is also questionable.

Canada is only a tenth the size of the USA economically.  So Trump's 50% tariffs are going to hurt.  But they're also going to hurt US-American consumers.  Canada is the USA's third-biggest trading partner and they don't buy our resources out of the goodness of their hearts.  On top of the rising cost of oil and everything dependent upon oil (including diesel for food delivery) there's all the other brainless sanctions Trump is applying on other countries around the world.  US-American citizens/consumers/households are going to be pissed.

Trump's idiocy occurs as he refuses to admit defeat against Iran in West Asia.  As the rest of the US ruling class refuses to admit defeat everywhere.  As their selfish schemes and corruption destroy the foundations of the very society their wealth is based upon.  As their delusional economic political-economic theories become less and less capable of disguising their failure.  As Russia pushes the Ukraine (and NATO) to the breaking point.  As China passes the USA in economic, military and "soft" diplomatic power.  As they expose their total moral bankruptcy in supporting Israel's nazi-genocidal policies.

Obviously what Carney needs to do is employ some Modern Monetary Theory and spend money employing Canadians whilst (in congruence with MMT) taxing the wealthy to limit inflation.  I doubt Carney will do this.  He will try (and fail) to sell militarism and austerity.

The bond markets are giving their verdict and someone other than Trump would be toast.  But Trump is one of the most unhinged megalomaniacs to ever occupy the Oval Office.  Plus, he's building an entire infrastructure to carry out a detailed, ruthless plan of election-stealing.

Late-capitalism is showing itself for what it really is. 

How Do Stupid People React When They're Abused By the System?

U.S. Senate kills bail-out of autos, 2009 rather than 2011, $9 billion, $9 billion a day in Iraq no prob, trillions for financial sector w/out really blinking, ... Dems don't force them to filibuster. 60 now mandatory to pass anything in Senate? bullshit. One of biggest causes of US auto ind.crisis is health insu. obligations, not union wages.

ldrs fucking them over to kill the union.

Just like the ruling class in Fr. Rev. kept pushing till their own system collapsed, U.S., world corp.elite det'd to destroy themslvs

Keep piling it on fuckheads.

But, rev. not guaranteed (even Rev don't turn out way s'posed to) because, people don't seem to know what to do.

Stupefying pol. culture, mass ignorance, delusion, + stupidity and cowardice.

The majority when faced with powerful adversaries tend to turn on weaker/weakest minority scapegoats. Taking on the system takes brains and courage, bashing immigrants, unemployed, prostitutes much easier.

What happens when economy collapses? Many turn to crime, and victims (rightously) turn to law n' order and vigilantiism and sometimes fascism (pseudo-populist demagogues), instead of organization and demand for respect for all human beings, short-term calculations and living for self, family, friends, world can fuck itself.

That appears to be where canada will go.

Trump, Epstein, Israel

 

Just have time for a quick thought: I will continue to maintain that Trump was blackmailed into attacking Iran by Israel, which has compromising evidence of Trump abusing adolescent girls at Jeffrey Epstein's properties.

All this talk about continuities of US policy towards Iran, and the maintenance of the petro-dollar, and etc., do not take away from the fact that Trump's belligerence is unprecedented.  Other US presidents (for all the continuities of policy) did not go to war against Iran.

Furthermore, there is evidence that Trump was reluctant to go to war against Iran.  NOT because he was the "America First" hero who truly wanted to end the neo-cons' "Forever Wars."  (Trump recognized in 2015 --at least-- that those stupid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were stupid.  And he saw that opposition to them polled well with his voting demographic.  That's it.  That's all.  He's not a man of principle.  He genuinely believed that the neo-cons' wars were stupid, but if he needed to play along to get along, he would.)

No. Trump was opposed to war with Iran because he knew Iran would be a difficult job for the US military.  It would lead to unforeseen consequences.  As it was, as it has.

"Head-Waiter to the Provinces"

 

That's how Pierre Trudeau derisively described the role of the federal government in Ottawa according to the desires of provincial premiers. (Actually, I don't know what vision P.E.T. was denigrating, but you get the point.)

For a long time I haven't known how to think about this debate.  But now, it seems to me, that a weaker national government gives capitalists more opportunities to exploit weaknesses.  

I think debates between national and sub-national governments should continue and that they should be decided by what is best for the vast majority of people. 

It's Tough Being a Deluded Servant of Oligarchy

 

So, global warming denier Donald Trump is blaming Canada for somehow not "managing" its 3.69 million square kilometres of forest and thereby allowing giant wildfires to spread which causes smoke to fill the skies of various states along the Canada-USA border.  As if we're supposed to have armies of people wandering around the Canadian Shield putting dried twigs into garbage bags.  It's a moronic accusation that doesn't warrant a response.

But notice how Carney's options for rebuttal are limited because he can't point to the obvious role of global warming due to the burning of fossil fuels as the real culprit behind these fires.  (These fires have, obviously, become the "new normal" for most humans who now have to deal with them.  I'll bet at least 75% of the people in Toronto, where I live, have forgotten all about them.  It's sickening what we're prepared to put up with in order to avoid the struggle of having to adjust to reality.)

Carney can't blame global warming because he's a craven servant of the oil sector and he's committed to extracting and having burn even more petroleum than ever.

Every day the man comes up with more reason to be contemptuous of him. 

The Fires and the Fuck-Heads

 

Walking home from work last night my throat started to feel really sore.  From Toronto having the worst air quality in the world.  From the smoke and soot caused by the giant forest fires that are burning out of control in northern Ontario.  From global warming.

Many people are rightly blaming this disaster upon the fossil fuel companies, who have known for decades that this sort of thing was going to happen, but, being dedicated to "profit maximization" chose to deflect and deny.

As wildfires raged across Canada on Thursday, sending dangerous smoke across the border into major US cities, climate advocates called for accountability for the fossil fuel industry, which knew for decades that its products were largely responsible for the climate crisis, yet chose to push climate denial instead.

 Also, blame the politicians; ALL OF THEM, from the Conservatives to the Liberals to the NDP who are either the actual representatives of the fossil-fuels criminals or merely afraid of them.

But also blame the right-wing shit-heads.  The everyday, ordinary, salt-of-the-earth, working class chumps who concoct stupid theories from out of the lies and evasions of self-interested oligarchic scum, that deny the reality of global warming.  Blame these stupid assholes for being stupid assholes.  Blame them for denying global warming.  Blame them for denying the reality of COVID 19.  Blame them for worshipping disgusting grifters like Donald Trump and Doug Ford.  Blame them for their stupidity, ignorance, hypocrisy, delusion and their total lack of principles.

[Doug Ford allowed Ontario's wildland firefighters, pilots and support staff to fall to 61% readiness because of course he did.  That fat fuck is only good for lining his own greasy pockets.  But up until recently, there were still bigots and other ignoramuses who would stand in line for a $5 hotdog and get their picture taken with the guy who'd let them die in a hospital hallway.]

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.