RANT: I'LL SEE YOUR DRONE AND RAISE YOU A BABY NUKE.

    

WITH THE COCK-UP in West Asia (Middle East) threatening to ignite into something larger and more dangerous these past few months, we’ve been neglecting that other war, the one in eastern Europe, namely NATO versus Russia. Of course it’s really the collective West—Europe, America and cucks like Canada—who are in the fray supplying weapons and money to Kiev. So, it’s not just Ukraine fighting Russia, though it's Ukrainian soldiers who are the ones doing the dying, saving us the distress of seeing coffins draped with Canadian flags arriving home. So, there’s that.

But after four-plus years of war, the end game is closer than we imagine. To be clear: Russia is winning the war. It will succed in defeating Ukraine and its Western backers. All along the nearly 1300km front line, Russia is advancing at a relentless pace, if a slow one, because its main war aim is to attrit the Ukrainian army until it is a spent force. The capture of territory is secondary to the Kremlin’s goal of destroying Ukraine’s NATO trained, supplied and armed military that, in addition to the possibility of "defensive" nuclear-capable cruise missile installations along its border, it considers the force and its NATO backers as an existential threat to the Russian nation. Naturally, the Americans would feel similarly threatened if China, say, were to build missile installations at Windsor, Ontario aimed at Washington. Of course, the Americans would take action to eliminate such a threat along its border. [see: "radioactive ashtray". Ed.]

IN UKRAINE'S NORTH, the city of Kharkiv may once more be in Russian hands by summer’s end. Next is Sumy, a city of 250,000 and the last metropolitan region standing between Russian forces and Kiev. Russia will probably encircle and lay siege to the city, as it has done to other Ukrainian cities, cutting off supplies and weaponry. But the big question is: Will the Russians move on Kiev? Or will they move south on Odessa where, in recent weeks, it has been bombing port facilities and infrastructure in a bid to cut off weapons shipments and eliminate naval drone launching sites. When Russia finally takes the historic port city, Ukraine will be cut off from the Black Sea, becoming a land-locked rump state.

 

THERE IS SOME TALK about Russia finally taking the gloves off and winding up the war, taking all of what it calls Novo Rossiya (“New Russia”) that includes much of eastern Ukraine where most of the population is ethnically Russian and whose first language is Russian. It’s tragic to think that Ukraine could have saved so much blood and treasure and remained whole [except for Crimea] had it signed off on the “Istanbul Accords” in 2022 during the early months of the conflict. But pressure from the West, notoriously through the efforts of then-British PM Boris Johnson acting as Western point-man, put the kibosh to the peace treaty by guaranteeing NATO’s full support (save for troops) if Zelensky would tear up the deal. He did and here we are today.

OF LATE there has been an increase in Russian drone and missile attacks on Kiev and on energy and weapons manufacturing facilities elsewhere in Ukraine, and these may portend a change in the pace of the war.

 

👉THERE HAS ALSO BEEN A CHANGE in rhetoric as the NATO-Russia conflict grinds on, namely the use (or more accurately the lack of use) of the term “deterrence”. During the Cold War, the word was always present when analyzing the threat levels of proxy conflicts between the world’s two nuclear super-powers, the USSR and America. Each, with vast arrays of nuclear weapons between them, took deterrence very seriously, as they struggled for dominance in proxy wars and regime change operations over the decades. The intensity of these proxy campaigns was tempered by how far they could push the other before a threat became existential, where the survival of the nation was perceived to be at stake, and where the use of nuclear weapons was seen as a last resort. 1962’s “Cuban Missile Crisis” is a case in point, where the USSR, in response to the United States installing Titan nuclear-armed missiles in Türkiye, some months later installed similar weapons in Cuba, in a dangerous game of ‘tit-for-tat’. With both sides seeing the other’s actions as an existential threat, the world came within a hair’s breadth of nuclear war. What ultimately stopped this horrific escalation was the deterrence factor embedded in the M.A.D. principle (“Mutually Assured Destruction”). In this scheme, each side realizes that regardless of who strikes first, that country would be destroyed by a deadly counterstrike, leaving both, along with much of the northern hemisphere, a smoldering, radioactive ash-heap. It also helped that both President Kennedy and the USSR’s Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s served during WWII where they saw first hand (particular in Kennedy’s experience) how modern, industrialized conventional warfare could devastate whole regions of the globe, a factor, surely, in their assessments of how apocalyptic—by orders of magnitude greater—the use of nuclear weapons would be. Each calculated the mega-deaths and devastation that would follow if their armies unleashed the deadly force of their nuclear arsenals. Thakfully, in the end, each was deterred from attacking the other.

 

TODAY, WE SEEM TO BE BLITHELY IGNORANT of nuclear weapons and their destructive power or else we foolishly assume we can survive a nuclear war with minimal damage and even emerge victorious.* For decades, Russia has said the expansion of NATO into eastern Europe following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1992 was threatening existentially to it, with Ukraine in NATO being an absolute red line. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Ukraine was a neutral state with a pledge of neutrality written in its constitution. Subsequent pro-Western administrations in Kiev eventually changed this status and NATO came courting with armaments and money, until 2022 when Zelensky prepared to launch an attack into the Donbass region to quell dissent and silence calls for separation from Ukraine by the two oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk whose populations voted to join the Russian Federation. In late February of 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in defence of the ethnically Russian people of the Donbass and to make it clear it would no longer tolerate a pro-Western government in Kiev that was armed and equipped with the latest NATO weapons, tech and training.

 

FOUR YEARS ON and Ukraine has been emboldened, using long-range drones and missiles to attack deep into Russian territory, and while these assaults do not threaten or degrade Russia’s war-making capacity or change the inevitable Russian victory to come, nevertheless they indicate Ukraine and the West, particularly the Europeans, no longer are deterred by Russia’s array of nuclear weapons. Recall the incremental goading of Russia by NATO through its proxy, Ukraine, as the “defensive” military alliance introduced various weapons, weapon systems, munitions, tanks, missiles, drones, etc. into the conflict, gauging Russia’s response to each escalatory move by NATO and the West. Recall in June of last year how Ukraine attacked Russian heavy lift bombers—part of Russia’s strategic (read: nuclear) defence force. On what planet [Apparently, this one. Ed.] is it a good idea to attack bombers tasked with the delivery of nuclear-armed cruise missiles and gravity bombs? Recall also in May of 2024 how Ukraine used drones to attack Russia’s early warning radars used to monitor American ICBM launches, should that fearful day ever come. During the Cold War such provocations would have been unthinkable.

YET TODAY, European leaders issue bellicose statements demonizing Russia as they gin up their respective populations to prepare for war with the Slavic giant by decade’s end.

👉WTF, Charlie Brown! What are these bloodless pricks trying to do?! Instead of diplomacy and crafting a security architecture for Europe that includes Russia in a treaty everyone can (mostly) live with, it’s warwarwar! with most NATO-allied nations singing from the same hymn book. [Canada, America’s brown-nosed rent-boy, is in on this clusterfuck, don’t forget, and balls-deep as they say. Since 2022 the Liberal government in Ottawa has sent war materiel and armaments to Ukraine and committed 25 billion dollars to the notoriously corrupt Ukrainian government under Huckster-in-Chief, Zelensky. [Cha-ching! Ed.]

 

THE POLITICAL ELITES in Europe and the Collective West that have gotten us into this mess have to go the way of the dodo. And soon. There are stirrings in Germany, Spain and Poland, for example, but Europeans need to take these little Napoleans out to the collective woodshed and give them a good hiding! There is hope (and danger as well) as populations in Western nations are increasingly at odds with their governing elites. We all see the emperor has no clothes.

 

👉TODAY, we stand at an inflection point where change and violence walk side by side to that inevitable fork in the road, and which path we’ll be on is yet to be decided.  Let’s hope the drones and long-range cruise missiles we are currently firing into Russia don’t trigger the use of a tactical nuke or two by Moscow. Can’t say we haven’t been warned.😱 Isn’t that enough to deter us to seek a diplomatic solution to the conflict instead? Stay tuned!     

 

 

CHEERS, JAKE. _____________________________________

 

*Hence Trump’s recent musings around creating a “golden dome” over North America (or just the U.S. if Carney refuses to pony up billions of dollars for the scam project).  And, as it was with Regan’s pie-in-the-sky “Star Wars” missile shield of the 1980’s that proved to be unworkable so, too, will Trump’s version of the same boondoggle which will prove even more unworkable in this age of hyper-sonic ballistic missiles armed with multiple nuclear warheads that can travel thousands of miles per hour. It should be noted that if guardian missile arrays could protect the United States, say, from incoming ICBMs (“Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles”), this would be a destabilizing factor in the M.A.D. deterrence architecture. If one side believes it can launch a pre-emptive strike on its foe and not be devastated by a retaliatory response or, more importantly perhaps, if the foe thought such a defensive umbrella would work blunting its own retaliatory attack, then the options to launch before such a system could be put in place becomes all too real.

RECALL that during the Cold War, both Russia and the United States had one or two defensive missile batteries ‘guarding’ their capitals. That’s all. In other words, the installations were symbolic as part of the ABM “Anti-Ballistic Missile”) treaty of 1972 between Russia and the United States that limited each side’s ABM missile arrays to one site each, thus ensuring both sides had a healthy respect for the other side’s nuclear arsenals—i.e., the M.A.D. deterrence formulation that kept in check the establishment of ABM systems on a continental scale. [Regan’s Star Wars ballistic missile shield scheme didn’t get off the drawing board, and Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defence proposal will prove equally unworkable.

 

IN 2002, the ABM treaty was foolishly walked away from by George Bush Jr. during whose tenure additional anti-ballistic missile sites were established in the U.S. That a working ABM defensive shield has not been developed to date speaks to the physical impossibility of stopping an all-out attack with hundreds, even thousands of missiles raining down death and destruction by the mega-tonnage. Same goes for Russia. Any ABM system on the drawing board that’s been ‘gamed-out’ has been assessed as unworkable and a non-starter. [See Professor Ted Postol’s explainer (here.)] Thus, for thirty years both countries were deliberately left vulnerable, with no ABM shield capable of stopping more than a handful of incoming ICBMs, thus ensuring each side would mind their p’s and q’s and respect each other’s “red lines”. Or else. That’s deterrence, folks. Something we need to remember.

 

 

RANT: LEAVING ON A JET PLANE, DON’T KNOW WHEN I’LL BE BACK AGAIN…

 

RECALL THE PROVERB about the hole in the bucket—you know, the one where the farmer goes to the well to draw water, but no matter what he does the hole determines the carrying capacity of his water bucket. He will need to make more trips to collect the same amount he previously collected, costing him time, energy, and ultimately money. Or he will make do with less. Yes, he could repair the bucket but that's beside the point: In systems theory, there is the principle that an organism or an organization is only as strong, as viable, as its weakest link:

 

“The principle that "a system is only as strong as its weakest link" means a system's overall performance is limited by its most vulnerable component. [Italics mine] In system theory, this bottleneck or constraint—whether a person, process, or technology—determines the maximum capacity and failure point of the entire system. Strengthening the weakest part yields the highest improvements.” (Google AI)

 

THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ is the ‘weak link’ in the system of transporting crude oil and distillates from the Persian Gulf to the world. Functionally, it hadn’t been one before February 28 when Israel and the United States decided to once more attack Iran in round two of their illegal war of aggression against the Persian state. Prior to that, the Strait had been open and freely navigated by all. Iran closed the Strait (the sovereignty of which it shares with Oman), to vessels from nations hostile to it and those aiding and abetting their activities. Most Gulf oil goes to Asian markets (80 to 90%), with China receiving over one-third of all deliveries. Over 50% of China’s oil comes from the Gulf through the Straits of Hormuz, while ninety-eight percent of Filipino oil and nearly 90% of Japan’s crude oil comes from the Gulf. These countries and others (Italy, Greece, Poland, Spain, Malasia, India and Pakistan) have negotiated deals with Iran and now pay it toll fees, some as much as two-million dollars per tanker, for safe passage through the Strait. That amounts to billions per year in increased revenue which will go towards rebuilding Iran’s infrastructure damaged during the United States/Israel-Iran war begun in June of last year and reprised on February 28. There has been a tenuous ceasefire since April 7.

 

Note: Dissatisfied with the pace of peace negotiations brokered by the Pakistanis in Islamabad, on April 13 the United States imposed its own blockade (a blockade of a blockade!), denying passage for ships bound for, or leaving from, Iranian ports. This was done to pressure Iran to open the Straits to all maritime traffic free of charge, as it was before the war.* [Surely, war planers in the Pentagon considered closing of the Strait was something Iran would probably do once the shooting started? Now the mess created by the U.S. and Israel has spread, with ramifications for the entire globe. Nice job, guys! Ed.] Over three-quarters of Iran’s oil shipments have, thus far, been confiscated by Trump’s illegal blockade. But with millions of barrels of oil already in tankers at sea and in its shadow fleet ships, with pipelines to Turkey and the Caspian Sea, and with higher crude oil prices due to market unease over how the war is gaming out, all these mean that Iran can sell its oil at premium prices, resulting in an overall increase¹  in state revenues. 

STILL, there's the problem of Iran’s oil storage capacity being nearly full, which means oil wells must be capped, until their flow can be restarted at a future date (not an easy process.) And, don't forget the same problem exists for the rest of the Gulf States with uncapped oil wells filling up storage capacity, necessitating more and more wells be temporarily shuttered, adding to the time it will take to restart them and ramp up production after the war ends. 

👉That's unless Trump does something really stupid like starting the bombing campaign again. Which would trigger Iran to respond with a massive missile attack, decimating the Gulf states (and Israel, and American bases in the Middle East) and their oil infrastructure, taking offline 20% of the globe's oil supply. The resulting damage to economies throughout the world in the wake of such a clusterfuck would be incalculable.

 

MEANWHILE, in early May as I write this, countries around the world are beginning to feel pressure points in their economies as looming shortfalls in crude oil supplies are ‘baked-in’ and all but inevitable, with the resulting supply-chain disruptions already being felt in Asian countries, especially those with inadequate strategic petroleum reserves, or ones that are hard-pressed to pay for more expensive petroleum products. By now, most tankers that exited the Straits prior to February 28 have reached their destinations and have discharged their cargoes. Once that is used up, there will be a 20% shortfall in available crude until production levels once more meet the demand. Unless something is done to bring this war to an end real soon, some commentators predict a global recession by the summer and the possibility of a serious depression this autumn—one that could be on par with the Great Depression of the 1930s—unless crude oil and petroleum distillates are flowing full-throttle within the next few weeks. 

The American ‘counter-blockade’ against Iran must be lifted before the Iranians will even consider talks on opening the Hormuz Strait to pre-war traffic levels. Gulf states that aided Israeli and American attacks are not allowed to use the Straits at present. Global shortfalls in crude oil will mean shortages in dozens upon dozens of plastic products made from oil, including distillates like diesel and jet fuels.

 

Other Gulf exports like LNG, urea and ammonia (used in fertilizers), aluminum, as well as helium used in the manufacture of computer chips, will soon be in short supply. 

And a shortage of certain pigments made with petroleum distalates, along with an accompaning price hike in the available stocks, has led one Japanese (potato) chip manufacturer to print their bags in black and white [The Horror! The Horror! Ed.] 

👉ALREADY, farmers here in Canada are predicting lower crop yields later this year and next summer, due to increased cost of fertilizers, herbicides, diesel fuel, etc. Canada uses approximately 2.4-million bpd of oil, including nearly 900,000 bpd that is imported and sold primarily to eastern Canada. In an oil crunch, I guess Canada could export less to fulfill the country's needs or access the nearly limitless Alberta oil sands. Problem there is getting the oil from the west to the east coast. There are no east-west pipelines for a variety of reasons, and so Canadians should not be too sanguine about easily accessing oil diverted from exports or topping up our tanks with oil sands bitumen in a pinch. All may not go according to plan. And it's interesting to note that Canada is the only member of the G-7 countries that does not have a federally-controled strategic oil reserve, relying, instead, on the vast bitumen deposits in the west. Hmmm...

 

AIR LINES were the first headline grabbers, with an insecure supply chain for jet fuel causing the immediate cancellation of flights or the elimination of air travel routes altogether. (Who wants to buy a return flight ticket when jet fuel might be in short supply at the other end.)

IN EARLY APRIL, farmers in Ireland protested the rising costs of diesel by creating roadblocks with their tractors and other forms of peaceful demonstrations. FOLKS, THE PAIN WILL COME HERE in the next few weeks with the fuel price rise (despite the Liberal government temporarily removing the federal sales tax on gasoline). Expect scarcity of some food products and consumer goods along with price increases. 

 

👉As long as the Straits of Hormuz remains closed, things will only get worse. A note, passed from the Iranian delegation to Pakistani mediators listed five prerequisites that the Americans and Israelis must accept before negotiations over Hormuz could be discussed. These ‘givens’ to any future treaty run headlong into America’s maximal demands of "zero enrichment" of nuclear fuels and limits on Iranian missile forces; etc.. It’s hard to see where a deal can be made, especially given the abysmal track record of Trump’s negotiating team of Mutt and Jeff Kushner and Witkoff; the continued use of those two suggests to all and sundry that the Americans are not interested in genuine peace negotiations. If they were, they would not send these two unserious people to do the hard work of negotiating on behalf of the American government.

 

IT'S a knock-em, smack-em, drag-out match to see who will groan first--Trump or Iran. It's about who can withstand the pain the longest as world markets crash and economies slide into Recession, and even into that razorback-filled pit of Depression, as supply chains crack and crumble. The United States started this thing, with Zionists at home and abroad aiding and abetting, and arm-twisting the American president into yet another foolish and costly escapade in the Middle East. It's not just Epstein's ghost that haunts the sleep of President Trump, it's also the Three Ghosts of Modernity: Hubris, Indifference and Envy.

 

👉I THOUGHT I would get back in writing mode now that Trump’s gone to China and all of us can take a breather and walk through sunlit fields far from The Donald's rollercoaster ride to Hell. Perhaps the Chinese will keep him. Wouldn’t that be nice?     

 

CHEERS, JAKE. _____________________________________

 

* AS I UNDERSTAND IT, Iran’s blockade is legal because the Strait of Hormuz waters lay within its (and shared with Oman’s) maritime territorial waters. The United States is in breech of international law because it has no jurisdiction to seize Iranian ships in the Gulf of Oman’s waters. Iran’s blockade of this vital ‘choke point’ in the maritime supply chain for oil may set a precedent for other such bodies of water throughout the globe. 

 

1. Recall that the United States originally allowed Iranian oil shipments (and Russian oil which remains tariff free) to reach their destinations, thus keeping the international price of oil from climbing too quickly. They subsequently placed sanctions on any country buying Iranian oil. Perhaps the most important aspect in this whole kerfuffle is the willingness on the part of more and more buyers to purchase Iranian oil using local currencies, chiefly the Chinese Renminbi (RBM) instead of U.S. dollars, thus avoiding American scrutiny of their dollar-trade activities. Not using the USD or “petro dollar”, is a sign of the weakening hegemonic power America exerts over global financial markets, with more dominoes set to fall in the coming months and years. 

Stay tuned!

 

 

  

       

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 beholden 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 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 your 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's 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.