i'd just like to remind everybody that afghanistan has one of the largest mineral reserves in the world and that the chinese are intending to leverage it.

that's reversible.

with minimal effort.

the only prime minister i would give absolute power to is optimus.

and the only prime minister i would take directions from is the prime directive.

i'm more concerned about carney's apparent authoritarian streak. he didn't want to be finance minister, he wanted to be prime minister. he has to be the boss, in control, but it seems to be more about his ego.

he's probably better off as a bankbencher economic advisor, but he wouldn't do it, because it's all about him and his legacy.

he can't break things the way biden did, and he does legitimately know what he's doing on monetary policy. yet, when people seek absolute power like carney is, it's almost always a good idea to stop them from getting it.

"handling" trump is not the right approach.

the right approach is adapting to trump. 

personally, i would argue that that is the one issue where carney is clearly best qualified, by a large margin. it's everything else that i don't like about carney, and which i'm far more concerned about, given that trump has 2 years max and carney might be in office for a while.

https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/bell-who-can-handle-trump-sure-as-hell-not-mark-carney-says-danielle-smith

i haven't seen any good polling on the liberal leader vote, and the process appears to be fairly shady.

neither carney nor freeland were remotely impressive in the debate.

don't be surprised if there's a surprise.

there's some articles up suggesting trump wants to invade canada for the reasons putin invaded ukraine, which would be difficult to defend against a strong analyst. is canada inviting chinese troops into the country?

but, the history is the other way around. canada is not a lost province of the us; the us is a lost province of canada. the united states declared independence from canada in 1776.

maybe, one day, we'll get them back.

israel does what he says and is a useful ally.

ukraine should stop whining and start learning. most presidents have and will act more like trump and less like biden.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/06/trump-israel-gaza-ukraine

if the us picked a fight with some block in europe, would canada come to europe's defence?

no.

in fact, a foundational shift in the trudeau government was to kiss washington's ass. it was decided that pushing back on iraq and cuba wasn't worth it. if trudeau were in office when bush invaded iraq, he would have signed up for it because fighting it in principle wasn't worth it.

we see how foolish that is now, and how right chretien was. chretien is this weird yoda character that speaks broken english and is somehow always right about everything, despite coming off as not very bright. he wrote most of the legislation we give the elder trudeau credit for. it was utterly stupid to intentionally flip the policy and bail on the global south. we may now suffer tremendously for that.

asking europe to pick between america and canada isn't going to help us. that is clear, and they shouldn't be faulted for it.

does donald trump think he's thomas paine all of a sudden, or something? he keeps talking about common sense, as though he even knows what that even means.

i bet that your average trump voter would guess that thomas paine is ringos starr's new wrestling name, tommy pain.

they'd let him use his sticks in the ring, right? 

i don't understand what the intent or purpose of "cutting off" things to the united states is. is it supposed to be "punitive"?

they're our only market in many cases. they can buy things elsewhere, and in fact want to; we don't want them to. we want market access and they're trying to take it away. "cutting off" things us what they want.

if i was in a fight with somebody and i was given the choice between denying them access to goods or services at my own cost or increasing the price of goods and services, it is clear that my self interest would be the latter. i would always choose raising prices over denying access, every time, without serious debate.

perhaps the obvious truth should be considered: if the behaviour of canadian politicians aligns more closely with american interests than canadian interests, as has often been the case since mulroney and the fta, maybe that's what the truth actually is. perhaps this is a charade and the truth is that ford, trudeau, the bulk of the old tory media and the rest of the punditry-political-industrial complex are actually working for american lobbyists and that is why they are talking about "cutting off" trade with the americans at our own demise and cost and their actual longterm benefit, rather than maintaining it by aggressively trying to cash in on it by introducing export taxes.

when some deduction doesn't make sense, perhaps the axioms should be questioned and reanalyzed.

it would actually be very helpful for trump and the region if he'd put aside a few hundred million dollars to fight drug trafficking and take on the armed thugs running central america.

has it crossed trump's mind that 30 million dollars for social cohesion in nicaragua or 50 million dollars for social engineering in uganda or 70 million dollars to stamp out a civil war in mali might actually help to reduce illegal migration?

i watched part of the state of the union. it wasn't that different than previous ones.

this is what i want to say: trump is worth opposing, but not on the grounds the democrats want to oppose him on, which are mostly the small number of things he should be supported on. in fact, the democrats are going to largely avoid opposing trump on the things he should be opposed on, because they actually agree with him.

trump comes off as uncouth, granted. people criticize him for not really being rich because of how he acts and talks. further, he has some ideas that we haven't heard in a while, and some of them are bad and some of them are less bad. however, fundamentally, i don't see a break from the status quo neo-liberal washington consensus, where the democrats and republicans agree on everything i'm opposed to, and they argue about things i either don't care much about (gun rights) or actually think the republicans are right about (russia).

do you think that colbert looking guy running the house of representatives sitting behind trump supports tariffs on canada? he doesn't. he hates it. he's waiting trump out. the bankers do this from time to time in history, and it exposes what the truth is, which is that trump is the puppet, and the real oligarchs are using him to sit on power and get what they want done, which appears to be an end to this stupid war with russia first and more tax cuts second.

i will eventually pick a side and align with a party, but it's not going to be in the next four years. what i see is the same thing i've seen since the end of clinton, which is my entire adult life - two parties that i disagree equally with in their core principles, which they largely share, and can equally support 10-20% of the policies of, albeit my support would be for different policies on either side. i would disagree with 90% of what democrats support and 90% of what republicans support, but would agree with random policies pushed by either party.

i'm going to largely agree with what trump does as commander in chief, which is his actual job, amidst howls by the democrats, which i will mostly ignore or flat out criticize. i was vehemently opposed to biden's foreign policy, which i thought was catastrophic and brought us to the brink of nuclear war. i will strongly disagree with trump on his economic and tax policies, which democrats will probably actually vote for. i had minimal support for some of biden's domestic policies, but i largely thought he was too right-wing on economic issues and his legislation had no chance of accomplishing what it purported to accomplish because it relied strictly on voluntarism and the use of market theory, when he should have been passing laws about emissions levels and then sending people to jail for breaking them.

i missed this yesterday.

this is the smart approach.

*applause*.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/article/us-commerce-secretary-calls-premier-ford-as-ontario-plans-to-put-export-tax-on-electricity/

i sample a small section of the good neighbour policy speech in my 2004 symphonic work, "interplanetary isomorphism". 

this composition is complete, but the recording/ep remains unfinished. i have been intending to complete a remaster of this track for years, which would close the ep, but i've been fighting off all kinds of bullshit and haven't been able to.

it is featured as the centrepiece of my upcoming eighth record, {e}, which will be backdated to 2005 when it can be finalized.

all sound in all trivial group material created by the identity element, the one. that's the point. it's solely me; strictly me. nobody else is ever invited. any attempt to participate would be violently stricken. 

the missing link between inri and the trivial group is pythagoras, and i've created an akousmatic project to fill that in, but it's still in sketch stages because i simply can't get any work done. i was reading reconstructions of pythagorean philosophy in 2004. via pythagorean philosophy, which may have had indo-iranian origins via thracian influences, the trivial group is the origin point of the platonic tragic hero, jesus, which inri is named after. 

there are three official inri lps and one official deny everything lp, two official jjjjjjjjj lps and one official ftaa lp between the inri project and the trivial group project, which culminates in a 2xlp set. all of these projects in the main sequence (inri, deny everything, jjjjjjjjj, ftaa, trivial group, cycles per second, tetris, pi, proverbs) only include me as a member, but may include guest contributions from others. not the trivial group; if it's filed as trivial group, it is me and only me and strictly me and nobody else ever at all. otherwise, it's not the trivial group, it's some other group that is isomorphic to c2 or c3 or c4 or k4. there are also some side projects (rabit is wolf, cynicide collaboration, throatmotor, etc) with others, but mostly with an old acquaintance named jon that was reliant on me for bass for a few years. 

see, the reality is that this is going to cave in the cost of rent here in south detroit. windsor is going to be hit harder than it's been hit since nafta, which was extremely hard.

this is in my self-interest.

https://globalnews.ca/news/11064749/donald-trump-tariffs-ontario/

canada will not find friends or solidarity in europe. that's why i've been arguing against supporting them. that's the point.

if what trumps wants is hemispheric dominance, which is the monroe doctrine and not "manifest destiny", and he's looking to make a deal with the russians to get it, then the solution is to look towards other actors in our own hemisphere, not to poke monroe in the eye and pine for a return of colonialism by calling the french back into louisiana. vive la nouvelle-orleans et saint-louis libre? let us instead advance the good neighbour policy of fdr, retooled for canada, and look to make friends in the south.

the reality is that almost everything we buy from the united states could be grown or manufactured in mexico and already is and is already on our shelves. i guess it depends where you shop. i'm poor, so i do almost all of my shopping at walmart, and they don't import anything from the united states, it's entirely from mexico.

there are large countries in south america with advanced economies: peru, argentina, chile. brazil has a lot of the same problems as america, except far worse, but is a very populous nation with tremendous potential. it might be a secret nuclear power.

we are better off waiting this out and expecting it to be short-lived, but if this goes on for a while and the americans really want a new civil war for control of the hemisphere then we'll have to understand that and build alliances in the hemisphere to contain them with. right now, it's a little too early for the canadian government to be talking about an american containment strategy, but it needs to be ready, as a contingency plan.

right now, we should just slap massive export taxes on the giffen goods and perfectly inelastic commodities to try to milk them of their own stupidity and wait it out.

how much long term damage is trump going to do to the republican party?

could the republican senate even vote to impeach him, to remove him from office?

Ford has previously warned that a 25 per cent tariff on most Canadian goods at the Canada-U.S. border could result in the loss of 500,000 jobs in Ontario.

so, what happens if you shut down nickel and electricity exports? you just make it worse; you just create more job losses. you reduce revenue streams coming from taxes. you create a negative multiplier that is recessionary, especially in northern ontario. this could devastate northern cities; this is retarded.

the americans are shooting themselves in the foot and, in response, we're shooting ourselves in the groin. that'll show 'em, right?

but, if you keep the industries running and hike the price via export taxes, you save those jobs and create a revenue stream to help the workers in the industries that do get shut down by the tariffs.

ugh.

retards. everywhere. you have to be a retard to want to run for office because you have to be a retard to actually want to make decisions for others and control others and implement power over others. what do we do?

the greeks used to pick their leaders in the assembly, and force them to serve against their will, not let them volunteer to run, as they knew that allowing politicians to volunteer self-selects for retards that want power and dominance and control.

no. when i call you retarded, that doesn't mean i think you should be forcibly sterilized. it just means i think you're a fucking moron and should be called out publicly for your worthless, abject fucking stupidity, and i think that calling people out for being complete idiots is necessary and required and positive.

i ultimately don't like people telling me what words i'm allowed to use. i'll decide how i want to speak, not you, and you can go fuck yourself if you don't like it. i have no remote concerns about your feelings; i'm strictly concerned with my rights to free expression, and if you want to restrict my right to expression in any way, you are my enemy and must be smitten and destroyed.

until relatively recently, i would generally avoid calling somebody a retard because it was unnecessarily rude and tended to reduce the quality of the discourse. it was just unnecessary to resort to specious ad hominems; i could insult your position, instead of insulting you directly. it was more effective to merely imply you were a retard, and not helpful to actually point it out. it made me sound brash and uncouth. i have a better vocabulary than that. really. however, when these retards on the fake left (they're actually the far right. the left doesn't restrict speech, only the far right restricts speech) started trying to tell me i couldn't use the word, i felt it necessary to start using it just to assert the fact that i can and i won't be told otherwise.

what this is about is rebelling against an authoritarian culture trying to tell people what they can and can't say and how they can and can't think. people of all ages and all political alignments don't like that and are likely to spit in the faces of people trying to control them through policing their language, and kick them down the stairs and tell them to fuck off.

it is actually one of the basic principles of ideological liberalism to reject authoritarian control structures trying to police language or create categories of thought crimes. i consider my insistence on the right to call you a retard to be a left-wing position and those institutions trying to shut me down to be on the far right.

it does not align me with any of these groups at all, and i'd like to see more socialists be more vocal about this. the politics of restricting free expression is a losing political position, and these guys (they are 95% men) have co-opted a foundational principle of the left that the left needs to aggressively and assertively take back from them. this is our policy and you can't have it; fuck off.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/03/r-word-right-wing-rise

carney wants to cancel the carbon rebate and replace it with a tax cut for the rich, which he calls the "middle class", which would be a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

well, he's a banker in the neo-liberal era.

what else would you expect?

chrystia freeland's plan to "outwit trump" is to copy doge and mimic elon musk in order to dramatically reduce the size of the public service. this will save canadians money. supposedly. 

ok.

delete. delete. cancel. x. burn. burn. burn.

shipping oil to the eastern seaboard is not forward thinking. the carbon era is ending, trump will be gone in a few years, and it's generating a gigantic ecological threat for minimal economic gain over a short time frame. they should just leave the system in place and implement massive export taxes. the governor of michigan is trying to shut down the existing eastward movement of fossil fuels, and i fully support her in doing that.

this idea that transporting oil by pipe is safer than by boat or train (or plane) is missing the point. activists opposing pipelines are trying to stop the movement of oil altogether; we want to keep it in the ground.

canada still has massive undeveloped hydroelectric potential. i understand that some environmentalists oppose developing hydroelectric dams because they're conservationists (right-wing environmentalists, conservatives) that want to keep nature untouched. i support sustainable development that uses the science of ecology to develop a holistic relationship with the environment that allows for the continuation of development and industry in a way that doesn't generate a negative impact. we can reroute rivers in a way that is safe and doesn't harm the species that live in them. we should be focusing less on mining and moving dirty oil for the old economy and more on generating clean electricity for the new economy.

i don't want to own a vehicle, i want access to an efficiently run publicly owned electrified transportation system that connects the entire windsor-quebec corridor as a giant megalopolis.

an export tax on oil is also a carbon tax, remember. it's worth supporting strictly on that ground alone.

no. this is stupid.

instead, create a massive export tax, collect it on sales and redistribute the wealth from american businesses to ontarian workers.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/article/doug-ford-threatens-to-stop-nickel-shipments-to-us-on-eve-of-trade-war/

industries will also find ways to adjust to the tariffs. 

have you noticed that the price of coffee has doubled in the last few years? there are apparently climate issues with the production of coffee, but the increase in cost is due to the tariff taxes on the cost of aluminum. the tariffs increased the cost of producing the tins, and the costs got passed on.

in response, walmart has started selling it's coffee in cardboard containers instead, and they are selling their house brand at 50% the cost of the cheaper coffee (maxwell house) and a third to a quarter the price of the premium brand. they are going to completely undercut and rive maxwell house out of business unless they adjust, and i'd expect they will. these cardboard containers are made from recycled cardboard and are more sustainable as well.

coffee is an essential good for many people, including myself. coffee is food. i'd like to start growing it here indoors in a a circular, sustainable manner. removing the large amount of aluminum in the manufacturing process is actually a good thing, long term. 

i fully support the carbon rebate, will be dramatically harmed if it is taken away and am extremely disappointed that the liberals are promising to take the rebate away.

the right move for canada to make next is to slap large export taxes - 100%-200% - on items that the united states gets from us and can't find another source for, such as oil, uranium, potash, aluminum, nickel, gold, canola and electricity.

it is stupid to threaten to cut off the electricity like ford is doing.

he should jack up the price, instead.

then, you take that money generated by the export taxes and use it to help the workers harmed by the tariffs.

i'm still watching the liberal debate.

now is not the time to balance the budget, but three out of four candidates are insisting on doing it. let's remember back to 2015. the ndp were the opposition, and mulcair was running way ahead of trudeau, but then he promised to balance the budget, and trudeau promised to run deficits. trudeau ending up leapfrogging mulcair and winning a majority.

it's not the 90s anymore, but it's not as though chretien ran on balancing the budget. in fact, he faced major pushback for it. balancing the budget was what a very large number of people voted against in 1993. he ran on cutting the gst.

i'm consequently not entirely sure what these people are thinking.

canada is going to need to run large deficits to mitigate the effects of these tariffs. i don't want to hear about balancing the budget, i want to hear about the government absorbing the costs.

none of the candidates are impressing me but three of them are right of centre, and it leaves the remaining candidate - karina gould - as the only option, by default, although she seems to be rather flawed, as well. i'd rather put carney in a technical or finance role than make him prime minister; he doesn't strike me as a good candidate for that role.

the canadian liberals do this every few years, they swing to the fiscal right and run these technocratic candidates, and they can never generate popular support because it's not what people want. the banker is going to become leader, but he won't last long.

the idea that canada can mitigate it's problem with the americans by retreating back to the british empire is delusional. the british need to maintain lapdog status with the americans and will not stand up for us. further, the americans are militarizing the pacific to try to contain china, and will need to aggressively position forces in australia. 

the only way that we're going to escape washington is to conquer it, and if you follow the narrative, that's actually what the americans are worried about. they're afraid of us. that's the point.

we need to find some way to work with the americans, and politicians suggesting otherwise should be seen as insane. it's geography. it's unavoidable.

everybody needs to calm down. trump is a lame duck president, and an anomaly on canada. he's not overseeing a shift in policy, he's a loose cannon. we should avoid reacting rashly, as this won't last, and we don't want to create more damage than is necessary, when we seek to undo this with the next president. 

so, hamas should release the hostages if it wants to receive aid. why is anybody sending these thugs anything in the first place? cutting off aid until they release the people they're holding hostage is entirely reasonable.

zelensky says he's not playing cards, but he doesn't understand.

trump has stopped playing monopoly and has started playing risk. he has the cards. zelensky doesn't.

but trump will make him a deal for some better cards.

 

based on the results of the ontario election, it would appear unlikely that chrystia freeland is going to win her own riding, let alone win an election for prime minister.

that would be the correct outcome. she should not be rewarded for the stunt she pulled.