the liberal party of the past would have told the americans that it would only support regime change in venezuela if it were upheld by a security council vote, in which case it would join the alliance produced by the global governing body. and, if global consensus could not be reached, we would withhold our active support - although they could still buy weapons and intelligence from us if they insist, and the price is right.

i want to be clear: i'm not saying that the liberals of the past would have rejected regime change outright, and am in fact rather explicitly pointing out that they wouldn't have. what i'm pointing out is that they would have rejected the idea that the americans have the right to act unilaterally, and outside of international law - and rather pointed to the united nations as the body that has the sole right to make these decisions. our historical liberal party would have then stuck to the decision made by the global body, with little wavering on the point.

and, why would they have done this? because they understood that a world order where the americans can use their military arbitrarily puts us at grave danger. they didn't care about iraqi or vietnamese or venezuelan civilians. no; don't think that, you're missing the point. what they cared about was ensuring that a rules-based international order existed that would prevent the americans from doing things like blockading the juan de fuca strait, or seizing the tar sands or invading and/or bombing quebec. if they can bomb vietnam or iraq or venezuela whenever they want, and without answering to anybody, why can't they bomb us under equally flimsy pretexts?

well?

why can't they?

what the sitting liberal government has done is abandoned this leveraging or balancing approach in favour of full on brown-nosing. the new principle at work in canada-us relations is that we're best off sucking up as best we can, in hopes of generating special treatment. so, we are to go out of our way to demonstrate that we're really the bestest of friends, and always were.

this is a continuation of a change put in place by the harper government.

and, it's failing.

because it's absurd and transparent and disingenuous, and ultimately irrelevant - trump doesn't care if you want to be his friend or not.

people will look back at the wisdom of our foreign policy in the second half of the last century, and wonder what caused canada to lose it's intelligence, starting in the mid 00s. and, the answer is at the root of so many of our problems: we decided against educating our children.

let's get the basic facts on the table: there were no canadian troops in vietnam or iraq, although we did provide peace-keeping or training forces after the fact. the reason we did not participate in these invasion forces has nothing to do with pacifism or anti-war rhetoric, but was rather solely because the invasions were not agreed upon by the united nations.

chretien has been crystal clear from the start that he would have sent troops to iraq if the united nations had backed the invasion, and we have a testable way to demonstrate the accuracy of this claim, because he did send troops to afghanistan, under the united nations mandate.

this is not an original idea that i'm espousing, but is rather the central thesis of any book written after the second world war on canadian foreign policy. i'm not letting anything out of the bag. the americans understand our position, or at least what it used to be. and, if you don't understand what i'm saying, then you don't know what you're talking about - it's that basic, that fundamental, to canadian foreign policy.

our position on venezuela is consequently a dramatic break from our historical position, because it for the first time in our history (as a british colony until 1982, and a sovereign state since) acknowledges the primacy of the monroe doctrine, over the supremacy of the un charter. that does not mean that it is the first time that we've aligned with the united states, and it clearly is not. but, it is the first time we've acted as a client state, disinterested or unaware of our own interests, and focused solely on the promotion of washington's, in the hope we'll get some kind of reward from the white house. we have never, ever, ever done that before. at all.

it is perhaps naive to ask the government to investigate.

but, what else do you do?

i don't know when we're going to come to terms with what is happening.

and, it is even very possible that valcourt doesn't actually know.

but, the evidence is pretty clear: there is some clique or agency within the canadian government that is, in fact, attempting to systemically exterminate the indigenous population by targeting the women, who continue to disappear at alarming rates.

that fits the definition of genocide, in my view.

but, nobody knows who or what is organizing this - it's covert, and shrouded in mystery. there are no released documents, no conspiracy theories, no secret csis plans - just all of these females that disappear after being taken into custody, with no explanation or further elaboration as to why.

i was in loose communication with the sisters in spirit when i lived in ottawa, and i've looked into this. one of the more distressing pieces of information that you see when you look at the data is that it is frequently the case that the last person that the missing person was seen with was a police officer.

the truth is the opposite of what valcourt is saying: the report is a cover-up.

everybody that's looked into this knows what the truth is, but nobody wants to state it, and it's not stated in the report, either.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/valcourt-mmiwg-report-1.5159437

i guess i had to catch up on sleep this weekend; i've been sleeping since friday night, awaking only to eat.

i could blame it on the weather but there's probably a better answer: i went to four parties last week and smoked a lot of cigarettes at them. i don't smoke when i'm at home, so i've been thrown back in withdrawal. nicotine is a physical addiction...

there is no possibility that i'm going to start smoking habitually again, but that could go a good ways to explaining why i'm so tired right now.

i need to get up, though. i need to clean, i need to do some writing. coffee, it is.

but, nothing has changed: i'm still sorting through concert listings and trying to plan a good trip to london and/or toronto to file, some time in the middle or the end of the summer.

i'm going to call the oiprd on monday morning and chew them out.

this is just a reminder: i have until mid-september to file the human rights complaint, and if i have to wait until then, i will. there are no time frames around the other suits.

the longer that it takes for the oiprd to get it's review completed (and i'm still waiting. it's now over two months since they agreed to the review.), the worse off they'll look in the eyes of the judge. it was supposed to be done by mid-april....