NEWS OF THE WORLD: BITS AND BITES FOR THE NEW YEAR

  

👉FOR SOME TIME NOW, most of us have come to the realization that the American president, Donald Trump, is either demented or senile or both. He has become, in a remarkably short time, an emperor with no clothes; butt-naked, self-absorbed, capricious, whose ire is easily aroused against friend and foe alike. It's quite possible that Trump is not his own man and is beholding to donors, or members of the deep state, or the MIC (Military-Industrial Complex). His uncompromising support of Israel, clearly guilty of war crimes and genocide, seems inexplicable unless you assume there’s some “compromat” about, perhaps beach-blanket-bingo pics from Epstein Isle that found their way into the hands of Israeli security services. Who knows?

His kooky trade policies: sanctions on again, off again. Most recently, because Carney seemed to criticize him in Davos (he did) the day before he came and delivered his usual rambling, cranky, talking points, now he's “decertified” several types of Bombardier business-class jets to get even. (Maybe he was pissed that Carney got a standing ovation and he received only sparce applause?) We'll see where this goes. His domestic clusterfuck around his ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) brownshirts officers killing innocent American citizens while searching for illegal immigrants in Minneapolis is eroding support among younger voters. As is his criminal support for the beyond-the-pale administration of “Bibi” Netanyahu as the fascist prime minister of Israel conducts a genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza before the eyes of the world.

BTW, young people are fleeing TikTok, now that it’s been bought by Zionist billionaire Larry Ellison and coverage of cute kittens dancing competes with tips on how to tighten one’s derriere. Under thirty-fives are finding other venues and platforms to gather news of the world, like the latest from Gaza and other crimes scenes.

What will happen in the next while around Venezuela? Greenland? Canada? Will Trump continue half-heartedly supporting Zelensky or drop him like a hot potato? And what about the New START arms limitation treaty which ends in five days?! Will Trump renew it for a year while the U.S. and Russia negotiate a new one? I doubt it, and that may be another sign he is not his own man and bows to behind-the-scenes pressures. Will TACO Trump launch an attack on Iran even with the danger of a major Iranian response against American bases in the region and Israel? Can Israel survive an all-out missile and drone attack from Iran? Will it resort to nuclear weapons if it appears it is losing? It's quite possible. And then the world will change in ways we can’t yet apprehend. 

So, stop fucking around Mr. TACO! Man-up and do what is necessary to end this dangerous sabre-rattling. There’s already enough blood spilled on you watch.

Screw it for now. A hit of Soma, the latest feelie, and I'm right as rain.

 

👉AT THE DAVOS CONFAB earlier this month, Canada’s PM, Mark Carney, gave a memorable speech that went viral a couple of weeks ago. I know what many of you are thinking: ‘Jake, how can you say with a straight face that a Canadian politician could give a speech that was in any way memorable?’ True enough, dear readers. So, it goes without saying that I was more than a little surprised when our Prime Minister laid bare in Davos a couple of whopping truths rarely spoken by Western politicians and their hangers-on. His speech came after months of roiling and thrashing about on the part of the American president, with buckets venom upended on his neighbours, friends and foes. Including Canada. Carney’s Davos debut (as Canadian PM) came after a career in finance (at the giant, “vampire-squid” investment bank, Goldman-Sachs), and serving as head of both Canada’s and England’s central banks. On 23 April 2025 he was installed as Canada’s twenty-fourth Prime Minister, following Justin Trudeau’s departure from politics in late January 2025.

 

FUN FACT: Originally, in the mid-Twentieth Century, during the Cold War, global economies were divided into the ‘First World’, composed of democratic, capitalist, industrialized NATO countries aligned with the United States; the ‘Second World’ was composed of the USSR, other communist countries, and Warsaw Pact countries aligned with the USSR; and the ‘Third World’ originally referred to non-aligned countries that were members of neither bloc. Today, the ‘Third World’ usually refers to impoverished and mostly Global South countries. 

 

MARK CARNEY IS NO RADICAL—he’s very much an ‘insider’, an elite member in the globalist, neo-liberal, IMF, World Bank, de-industrialism, financialization, free trade, post-WWII economic order. He’s a banker; he doesn’t want to tear down the system that, for decades, benefited ‘First World’ countries and their elites. Yet, his Davos speech, in which he said the world order was entering a “rupture” with the past, was interesting because he said the quiet part out loud to an audience of his peers. He said the system, also dubbed the “rules-based international order” is no longer working. Instead, “Great Power” rivalry, where the use of military force and economic sanctions has eroded the fiction that Western governments, particularly the United States (though Carney doesn’t mention it by name), all act in accordance with international law or promote rules that facilitate trade and regulate interactions between countries in a fair and equitable manner.😆

CARNEY SAID it had all been a lie—that we were not the ‘good guys’, that actions taken by powerful nations against weaker ones were not done because they were upholding “democracy” or “freedom” or “good governance”. They were done to advance Great Power dominance, period, and operated less from United Nations’ principles and international laws than from rules made by stronger nations for their own benefit. It was a convenient and profitable fiction for the countries promoting it, including nations within the hegemon's orbit.

 

THAT FICTION Carney ripped away, leaving the ugly scar exposed for all to see. The PM stated, bluntly, that everyone knew* the ‘rules based international order’ was a fiction but we went along with it because we benefited, were made rich by it. We rode the coattails of the United States for decades, “comfortably numb” to how often America’s actions benefited us at the expense of blood and treasure levied against other nations. Trump’s actions in the first year of his second presidency exposes the hypocrisy so evident in the West’s preeminent nation—that it wasn’t a good-faith actor abiding by rules along with the rest of us.

Carney said that we in the West promoted the lie when we claimed we believed in the so-called rules-based international order. We didn’t, actually, but we went along with the masquerade. The Prime Minister made his Davos speech at a time when it's becoming clear that the United States no longer wishes to pretend it abides by international laws when they prove inconvenient. As a global hegemon since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States uses military force, sanctioning and coercion against whomever it considers an enemy or peer competitor. Even countries once considered allies are now being targeted with sanctions or by threats of invasion or by other coercive methods. 

Since he’s returned to office, Trump has taunted Canada about becoming the fifty-first state. His actions vis-à-vis Venezuela and potential actions against Greenland no doubt convinced Carney that Canada needs to diversify its trading networks and to form new alliances and not be so dependant on the US market. In his speech, he said middle-powers like Canada need to come together with other middle-powers to push back, or better weather the times when hegemons, old and new, begin using their power untempered by law, rule or morality.

 

“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” (Joseph Goebbels Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff. CNN interview, with Jake Tapper 3 January 2025.)

 

AND IF ANYONE THINKS the above quote is hyperbolic and not representative of the Trump administration or of Trump himself, think again. Listen to what Trump himself has been saying about acquiring Greenland, “the easy way or the hard way,” to name just one piece of real estate the president is interested in adding to his portfolio. He sounds like he’s channeling Don Corleone these days more than anything else. So, keep your head down and don’t fly your kite in stormy weather.¹

 

👉RECALL the case of Montrealer, Eves Engler—political activist, author, and recent NDP leadership candidate who, in 2025, was charged with “harassment” of the pro-Israel social media influencer, Dahlia Kurtz, and spent five days in jail while the charges were processed. The complaint stemmed from Engler’s social media replies to Kurtz’s posts on X, some months prior to his arrest. Kurtz is a rabid Israeli apologist and Engler challenged her assertions by replying to some of her posts. He says: “I’ve had no other interaction with Dahlia Kurtz in my life except for responding to her anti-Palestinian and pro-genocide messages on X.” (Rabble.ca) He was told by the arresting officer he would be granted bail with the stipulation he does not write about police actions in his case, a requirement both Engler and his lawyer rejected. He was released on bail after a few days. Subsequently, he wrote posts critical of the police in their zeal to defend Kurtz’s right to publish pro-Israel posts while denying Engler’s right to challenge her positions. 

 

His supporters started a letter writing campaign after Engler suggested in his blog one be started for which he was charged with “harassment” of the arresting officer who received about two-thousand emails supporting Engler. The officer complained that having to deal with so many emails limited her ability to perform other police duties. [Set up an email filter. Easypeasy. Ed.] He was subsequently charged with four offences including “intimidation” of the snowflake officer in question. IIUC, he was found guilty and has an upcoming sentencing date in April.

This is an example of “lawfare” used by the state to intimidate and silence critics, especially critics of Israel and its Hasbara minions in Canada like Kurtz. If Yves receives anything more than a slap on the wrist or a small fine, it will be obvious that the government is trying to silence his voice and that censorship is alive and well in Canada. Who’s next? Keep your eyes open, folks.   

 

👉BITE OF GOOD NEWS: The Appeals Court of Canada ruled the Trudeau government’s use of the Emergencies Act in February 2022 to break up the “Freedom Convoy” trucker protests in Ottawa and several key border towns infringed on protestor’s Charter rights. Three Court of Appeals Justices agreed with Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley² in his earlier ruling that the threat posed by the protestors did not rise to a level that warranted the federal government’s invocation the Emergencies Act. [That’s the updated version of the War Measures Act, invoked by Trudeau senior in 1970 during the “October Crisis”. The Emergencies Act (1988) had never been used before young Justin wielded it to batter the protesting truckers. Ed]. The federal government appealed Justice Mosley’s ruling and on 23 January 2026 the Appeals Court upheld Mosley’s ruling.

 

The Emergencies Act’s purpose is to give a range of additional powers to the federal government in situations that, “cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.” It may be invoked when “an emergency arises from threats to the security of Canada that is so serious as to be a national emergency.” The Act uses the CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) definition of a serious threat “which includes serious violence against persons or property, espionage, foreign interference or an intent to overthrow the government by violence.” Hardly the characteristics of the Ottawa protests. Though they were unruly, noisy and disruptive, the Federal Court of Appeals upheld the lower court ruling that the protests fell well short of a threat to national security and should have been dealt with through regular policing and laws.

   

CHEERS, JAKE. _____________________________________

 

* Perhaps I’m being unfair. Given the thick swamp of propaganda that Western publics are forced to wade through, particularly since 2001, it is understandable that most people still swallow the mainstream pap fed to them 24/7. Politicians, military leaders, academics, analysts, etc., should  know better, and Carney is saying most do know the “rules-based international order” story was hooey, but they went along to get along. Carney says the lies we told ourselves and the world—endlessly! —that we were the good guys, that it was those evil [take your pick] doing bad things to their populations, to other countries etc., that those lies hid the truth: It was Great Power machinations and little fish devilry that roiled beneath the fiction of international laws that prove inconvenient and vexatious to hegemons. 

The powerful accept the rule of law when it favours them. And they ignore it when it doesn’t. Now, it seems, the United States no longer needs to use such fictions, or excuses, couching their real-politic actions as “defending democracy” or some other vacuous and meaningless trope. For example, Trump says he wants Greenland because it is “necessary for U.S. security”, period. Never mind that its part of Denmark, a NATO ally. And never mind that Denmark would welcome any additional American bases or investments in Greenland.

 

👉SO here we are today with institutions, laws, agreements, treaties, legal processes fair and unbiased and, most recently, laws guaranteeing the sovereignty of nations (Gaza, Venezuela, Greenland, Canada?), that are being shredded by the country that once exemplified and promoted the rule of law and unbiased, international ‘rules of the road’ for all. It’s a sorry state of affairs, I’m sure you’ll agree.

 

1. Critics of Carney speech call it hypocritical because it’s only now, when Canada is 'on the menu', that he speaks out, denouncing the system that for decades Canadians and other Western sycophants benefited from, with our obsequiousness before the hegemon’s court extending to the unwritten rule never to speak about the emperor and the fact he has no clothes.

A further criticism of Carney is his solution to defend against our great neighbour to the south—that other middle-powers need to act in concert to push back or soften the harms done, but keeping intact the visibly failing system of late-stage capitalism, with all its inequities, instead of looking for other ways to organize our economies and our foreign and domestic affairs. Nevertheless, the first half of Carney’s Davos speech came as something akin to a breath of fresh air. Stay tuned.🙋

 

2. The legal advocacy group, Canadian Constitution Foundation took the government to court. The case was heard by Justice Mosley who ruled in 23 January 2024 that the government failed to provide convincing arguments the trucker protests were a threat to Canadian security, and that its actions to shut down and remove trucks outside Parliament Hill, and in particular the freezing of protestors’ and supporters’ bank accounts in order to break the blockades, was an overreach by the government and unlawful. The government subsequently appealed the decision, but the Federal Court of Appeals upheld Justice Mosey’s ruling last week.