i actually don't think this would be very difficult at all, because the united states has mountain ranges across both sides of it - the rockies and the appalachians. simply setting up two long strings of missile defense interceptors across the two mountain ranges would be highly efficient and not very hard.

they would have to work with us to set up a similar set of interceptor sites across the northwest territories, but they are largely defended from attack in the mainland us by the depth and size of the canadian frontier sitting in front of it. 

i clearly remember when george w. bush tried to push for missile defence - before the israelis proved it was possible - he showed a map demonstrating how the system would knock down incoming nuclear missiles that had the debris making a direct hit on an area in canada called EDMONTON, which was unmarked on the map, and which the americans doing the presentation were entirely oblivious of. they had no idea. needless to say, paul martin wasn't very excited about this.

it would make more sense to do this through norad and extend the shield through the canadian rockies into alaska, and then across the north to greenland. maybe something falls on baffin island. i wish no harm on the inuit, but we can't save everybody and we should be realistic about that.

but a shield across the continental american states? i don't think that's such a hard engineering problem at all. this is the country that built the hoover dam and beat the nazis to the bomb. c'mon guys. rediscover yourselves.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/22/politics/pentagon-golden-dome-scramble/index.html

the point i'm getting at is that white muslims from the middle east and north africa need to question their origins and understand their history as one of violent colonization. they've been violently separated from their roots and their history and their culture by the process of islamification and arabization. decolonization of the middle east and north africa means dearabization and deislamicization.

reconnect with your indigenous roots, whatever they are, as hebrews, as phoenicians, as berbers, as egyptians, as persians, as greeks, as armenians, as assyrians, as hittites. find out who you really are.

you're no arab. you're no saracen. you're no ethiopian.

you're white. you're caucasian.

so, decolonize yourself and reclaim who you really are.

the wikipedia map is very conservative.

this map better describes the three regions, and the areas they controlled at the end of antiquity, before the muslim invasion north.

it's easier to see what happened by consulting this image.

when the romans and persians were done killing each other, the saracens and axumites moved in and established a new religion in the elite. but they were quickly absorbed into the local population.

this was a period of chaos and anarchy. in addition to the heraclean wars, there was an outbreak of plague that devastated the population and a breakdown in trade that was probably the result of the ethiopians controlling all of the red sea ports for the first time, blocking roman access to the indian ocean and persian access to the mediterranean. what the archaeology shows is that the middle east underwent a period of massive depopulation from about 600-800, not that it underwent a period of invasion or replacement. the cities of antiquity in the levant were overgrown with weeds. the fields reclaimed the land.

when the dust cleared, people wanted to know what happened, so they made up this history in the 9th century to explain what happened. the truth is that the people alive in the 9th and 10th centuries, writing this stuff in syria and iraq, had no idea what actually happened, and no way to figure it out. so they made it up.

the origin of islam, and the people that spread it, is almost certainly as a heresy of the type of christianity practiced by people that lived in the kingdom of aksum, which is the geopolitical entity that dominated ethiopia, which again was christian during late antiquity and the early middle ages.

there were wars fought between aksum and rome and they probably took an unclear side in the long roman-persian wars, which allowed them to overrun the middle east at the conclusion of the catastrophic heraclean wars, and basically take over the area permanently.

this is obscured in the history but it is clarified by the genetics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Aksum

if mohammad existed, and he almost certainly didn't, he looked like an ethiopian. he was african black.

if jesus existed, and he also almost certainly didn't either, he looked like a greek or a persian. the oldest pictures we have of jesus make him look pretty white. most residents of the levant at the time of jesus' life would have been light-skinned. he would have been quite light-skinned, contrary to the attempts at revisionism that developed out of the 60s and 70s to make him look olive-skinned or brown.

that said, i don't support attempts to deport mohammad khalil, unless he is convicted of a serious offence, which i do not believe he has been charged with.

i would consider aiding or abetting hamas to be a serious offence worthy of deportation, but those charges have not been proven in court, nor has he even been charged with them, to my understanding.

you can't just deport people without convicting them of anything, first.

however, if there is evidence, i hope there's a lengthy show trial, that he is convicted on live television and that he's deported with flair. if they actually have evidence of him working with hamas, he should be made an example of.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74kg3e2m08o

In February, Trump announced he was revoking Biden's security access. In a social media post, Trump said Biden "set this precedent in 2021, when he instructed the Intelligence Community (IC) to stop the 45th President of the United States (ME!) from accessing details on National Security, a courtesy provided to former Presidents".

that's correct.

biden shouldn't have done that.

and nobody should be surprised that trump isn't acting like a grown-up about it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74kg3e2m08o

i want to react to columbia's instant shift in policy in reaction to trump's threats by side-stepping the issue. in fact, the administration likely agreed with trump in the first place and was happy to use the threats as an excuse to change course in a way it probably wanted to do anyways. trump is giving them an excuse.

are palestinians arabs? are they indigenous people? who are they exactly?

the genetic studies indicate that the palestinians are directly descended from the hebrews that lived in the period during antiquity. this has been interpreted by many as a fact that requires a rewriting of history, but that is not true; it is a fact that requires the reassertion of written history and the discarding of the attempts to rewrite history that developed out of 1960s and 1970s social movements, which is the true revisionism. the genetics have undone the recent post-wwII, largely post-1970, revisionism and reasserted the narratives from the classical, medieval and early modern periods. the hard science of genetics has actually upheld the importance and primacy of written history and undone the attempts to rewrite and revise that history that developed in the 1960s and 1970s.

what the older histories state is that the hebrews were largely converted to christianity after the destruction of the temple and the "expulsion of the jews" (which was overstated. more jews stayed and converted to christianity than left for europe or iran.), that they remained christians deep into the middle ages and early modern period and that they were only converted to islam by force in the late middle ages and early modern age, largely after the year 1700. they then became arabs in a process referred to as "arabization", in line with the islamicization. this happened across north africa and the middle east through different stages, over a long period. the carthaginians of north africa were quick to convert to islam, whereas the hebrews, assyrians, armenians and other indigenous groups in the middle east were actually very slow to convert, and in the end faced attempts at genocide in the 19th and 20th century for refusing to do so. this is actually ongoing; it's what isis is trying to do, and what hezbollah is in a real sense all about, in it's vicious persecution of the remaining christians in lebanon.

if the palestinians are indigenous, it's because they're converted hebrews, not because they are arabs. 

are the palestinians arabs at all? 

well, this word "arab" has had shifting meanings through time, and it's important not to conflate the word "arab" as it exists today with the word "arab" as it existed 2000 years ago.

the roman sources clearly distinguished between regions it called arabia, which were the areas in the middle east under roman occupation, and the peoples that lived in what we today called the arabian peninsula, which is where islam originated, who they called "saracens". the people in the roman arabian provinces were actually largely of greek extraction, but had integrated with the canaanite/hebrew/phoenician branch of semitic culture. for example, the nabatean kingdom of petra was a hybrid greek-hebrew region that spoke a language similar to hebrew and worshiped the greek god zeus. the romans called these people "arabs" and the people that lived to their south, along the coast of the red sea, "saracens". the saracens spoke a language more similar to arabic, and were the northernmost expansion of a people that have an origin point in yemen and ethiopia. these saracens were described in the roman sources as barbarians, occasionally fought wars with the romans, were at times conquered by the romans (there was a roman province along the red sea that it called arabia, but was in a region that saracens lived) and at times fought as mercenaries in the roman armies as distinct units from the arabs/ghassanids. the migratory bedouins on the direct boundary of the empire were called arabs.

the people that spread islam in the 7th century were not arabs but saracens. it is worth noting that the islamic history as we know it was not actually written until hundreds of years later, and by syrians initially and then kurds, not by saracens. these syrians would have been a mix of greeks, romans, persians, kurds, assyrians, hebrews and arabs and had little cultural or ethnic association with the saracens that spread the religion via the sword. these histories gloss over the distinction between arab and saracen made in the roman sources, for the precise reason that they were intended to generate the historical fiction of a united semitic race called "arabs", which did not exist at that point, but was generated into reality by the fabricated islamic history, which occurred in conjunction with a massive "translation event", in which islamic theologians scrubbed the secular greek texts (which they controlled because they controlled the land with the libraries, most importantly in egypt) for ideas that were inconsistent with islamic theology and then rewrote or burnt the ones that they didn't like. this is described in islamic history as a "translation event", but it was actually a giant process of historical revisionism under the guidance of vicious islamic fundamentalism, and it resulted in the alteration or destruction of virtually the entire greek cannon of history, science and philosophy. we only retained a small percentage of classical writing, and had to translate it back from severely distorted arabic translations. they wouldn't let christians access the greek sources until after they'd scrubbed and distorted them and translated them into arabic, first. it's for that reason that the renaissance didn't really pick up until after the fall of constantinople, which resulted in a mass migration of byzantines back to rome and the reintegration of ancient greek texts back into roman civilization, which the byzantines had themselves hoarded and prevented access to (although, the fact is that the latins and germans couldn't speak or read greek, anyways).

so, the term "arab" was initially the roman description of it's most south-east provinces, the areas south and east of judaea, and was inhabited by greco-canaanite tribes who were essentially hellenized jews or hellenized phoenicians. the people that lived to the south of these hellenized jews or phonecians, along the coast of the red sea, were called "saracens" by the romans and are the people that spread islam in the 7th century. however, their history was not written until the 9th-11th centuries, and by syrians and kurds (who were not saracens) that had been converted to islam, and sought to generate a falsified history to create a new empire using the roman name for the area, arab. this process of arabization occurred alongside the process of islamification, from roughly the years 1000-1700, with the levant actually being the last area to be islamicized and consequently arabized.

something else that the roman sources, and in fact some of the early islamic sources as well, are clear about is that the people that spread islam (the saracens, not the arabs) were black. the romans knew the difference between tanned and black. shakespeare, in his description of othello, might not have; the roman historians did. they had provinces in africa. they knew the existence of ethiopia. when the romans describe the saracens as "pitch black" or "as dark as the night", that should be taken literally and seriously. mohammad probably did not actually exist but, like jesus, was probably a fictional character. nonetheless, the people that came out of the desert in the 7th century and walked into the vacuum left by the end of the roman-sassanid wars were africans. they were ethiopians.

this makes sense based on what we know about genetics and linguistics, which places the urheimat of the saracens as in yemen, and indicates the saracens had previously migrated across the red sea from ethiopia into yemen. the roman-ethiopian conflict isn't well studied and is largely forgotten but it's every bit as important as any of the other roman border conflicts. the romans conquered egypt and moved south up the nile, to be blocked by the nubians and ethiopians somewhere in modern day sudan, as the greeks, persians and egyptians had been before them. however, they sent christian missionaries into ethiopia, who were quite successful. when europeans made contact with ethiopians, they couldn't conquer or enslave them because they were christian and the papal bull that gave them authority to conquer and enslave the rest of africa indicated they could only enslave and conquer non-christians. because they were christian, ethiopia maintained independence from european colonialism until mussolini tried to conquer it in the 1930s. the roman sources initially described islam as a christian heresy that developed on the arabian peninsula, and that also makes sense.

the classical history consequently describes an african black people moving north from ethiopia via yemen with a new religion called islam that probably began as an ethiopian coptic christian heresy and walked into the vacuum of power left in the middle east by the heraclean wars and converted an elite of hellenized jews and persians before being very quickly absorbed into the population. this is a modern example of the "elite replacement" model developed by the archaeologist jp mallory, which would appear to be the best way to describe how these things actually happen in real life.

the terms arab and saracen have different meanings in the latin and greek histories up until about the year 1500, after the end of the reconquista. they then become used interchangeably, but they were not initially the same thing and initially referred to different ethnic groups and geographic regions, with the arabs being the largely light-skinned hellenized semites in the roman controlled regions, who were most similar to hebrews and canaanites, and the saracens being the dark-skinned muslims outside of roman control, with an origin point in yemen and ethiopia, and who successfully invaded the area called arabia by the romans in the 7th century.

it follows that the palestinians are indigenous hebrews that were colonized by converted syrians and egyptians to the african/saracen religion of islam and had an islamic identity violently enforced upon them, and then were consequently "arabized", but not until as late as the year 1700. this is what the classical, medieval and early modern histories say, which was revised after world war two by archaeologists using questionable methods and a lot of magical thinking to develop a new history of peaceful coexistence, to eject the old history of war and conflict. this revisionism has now been upended by the genetics, which has reasserted the value of history, and the genetics should be seen as the type of evidence that has greater priority, over the archaeology. currently, these pro-palestinian protests are operating on the debunked revisionist histories made by archaeologists pushing magical thinking, to uphold the revisionism presented by islamic theologians. a school like columbia should make sure it is getting this right and is advancing modern theories, not the discarded ideas of late twentieth century archaeology or, shockingly, of dark age islamic theology.

what does that mean, functionally?

it means that palestinian nationalism is a fraudulent concept and that if palestinians want to celebrate their indigenous identity, they should do so by rejecting arab and muslim colonialism and reembracing their indigenous hebrew ancestry. as it is, palestinian groups pushing the primacy of islam are guilty of advancing colonialism in the region, not of fighting against it, and they should be called out for and condemned for their hypocrisy and ignorance. certainly, white european socialists should not be confused or misled and should assert and understand the facts. the role of an institution like columbia must be in asserting and teaching the facts and not in obscuring or confusing them, to advance ignorance and backwardsness.

when i was a little kid, back in the mid 90s, i wrote a song called "circus". i remixed, rewrote, reapproached and rerecorded this track a few different ways, but it's the original demo i recorded in my basement studio in 1997 that has the vocal section that has tended to confuse a lot of people.

i've clarified this a few times but feel the need to do so again.

the song is a critique of media, and i don't know how anybody could not realize that this is obvious. it's built on a dropped-d riff-out of the byzantine circus theme, which like much of byzantine culture ended up lost to history everywhere except in russia. you'll know it when you hear it, but you might not know it as byzantine circus music, you might associate it more with dancing bears. the dropped d riff through digital distortion (played on an ibanez with an awful bridge locking mechanism) made sense in 1997.

i am not suggesting that i actually want to be like the menendez brothers or like the unabomber in the sense of wanting to copycat their crimes, i'm mocking the media coverage and it's tendency to turn criminals into media stars. it's a similar message to a movie released in the 90s called "natural born killers", with woody harrelson and juliette lewis, that is also a critique of the media and that a lot of stupid people didn't understand.

you can hear a lot of who i turned into as an adult, as written into this site, on this track that i recorded as a kid. my media critique is a little more sophisticated than it was then, but basically the same.

in 1997, my biggest lyrical influences came from punk rock singers like dexter holland, greg graffin and jello biafra. i was also massively influenced by college rock singers like michael stipe and bono that were punk rock musicians in disguise. as such, i want to insert the disclaimer from the 4th offspring record, as narrated by jello biafra, before i post the song.

please try hard to understand. it's a sarcastic media critique. it's not a sick fantasy.

now, here's the song:

should there be federal standards for education?

there should, in principle; the shrinking of the world would imply more standards and not less. facts are not different in idaho than they are in new york. however, it's extremely difficult to enforce and uphold them.

in some states, deferring to local agencies is likely to be an extremely retarding process that severely harms young children. in some states, greater freedom to modernize and advance the curriculum will be used to great betterment.

there's good and bad in this and how it turns out depends on what the people in these states let and don't let happen. i'm reminded of the backlash against the abortion ruling.

this decision could very well cost republicans the house.

but why would canada want to cut off oil exports to the united states when it can increase the price instead?

the reason these pipelines don't exist is that there's no business case for them. alberta oil is high cost, dirty and low quality. we export it all to the united states because nobody else wants it. further, cutting supply to the united states will increase profits for venezuela and saudi arabia, and cut us out. 

there's a saying about cutting one's nose off to spite one's face.

it's an utterly stupid idea.

the correct tactic is an export tax.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/two-cross-country-pipelines-couldve-diverted-38-4-billion-from-the-u-s-new-study-finds

this is nonsense.

increasing taxes can cause inflation, but this tax is so small that the level of inflation has been measured at 0.25%.

decreasing taxes never reduces prices and those arguing it does are stating what amounts to a religious belief taken on faith that has been thoroughly debunked by decades of empirical science.

nothing gets cheaper on april 1st, except mark carney's credibility as an economist.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/cheaper-after-carbon-tax-cut

in canada, education is solely the responsibility of the provinces.

s 93, constitution act, 1867.

we do not have and have never had any sort of federal department of education.

trump's issue with canada is that trudeau made him feel inadequate. it's personal.

it'll blowover like a bad combover.

the flip flop in the presidency has perhaps obscured the fact that this is trump's second term and he's a lame duck on arrival. he has at most three years, probably less. there are midterms in 2026, which is now a year and a half away.

is trump going to conquer canada in six months?

further, the likelihood of this policy surviving trump is essentially nil. the reason mark rutte laughed is because it actually is a joke, although i happen to remember mr. rutte in his previous job, and this is not uncharacteristic of him, as an individual. mr. rutte is a longstanding asshole. he also laughed when bush invaded iraq.

you never know with trump. maybe it's an elaborate loyalty test. i think that would be giving him too much credit. however, we see that there is a subset of the elite in canada that did not require much of an incentive to abandon north america as a project, of which we are a part of, as a sovereign country.  

canada should look in the mirror and see itself for what it is and understand the truth; trump is accusing us of being a bad ally and to a large extent we're proving him right. it is true that we have values that are different than theirs and we can't allow them to be compromised. we should absolutely be telling them to fuck off and spitting in their face if they want to put tariffs on us. defence contracting should be on the table, at least. we have to demonstrate via empirical fact that we're not the 51st state and expect them to get it when we do. however, talking about supplying weapons to military alliances in opposition to the united states that would put us in direct conflict with the united states military is too much and needs to be rejected - that's not in our self-interest and not what's going to happen. voices calling for this outcome should be identified and isolated for what they are, which is stupid and dangerous and borderline treasonous.

the chinese are not communists, they're the most vicious capitalists in the history of the planet and arguably have tipped over into fascism. workers in china not only do not control the means of production but have absolutely no rights at all. i've been over this before - china is unique in the world as being the singular standing non-greek culture. all of europe is greek, all of the regions colonized by europe are greek, the russians are the most greek, the muslims are greek, the indians are greek and most of southeast asia is even greek, too, as the furthest extension of greek colonialism. what's left is the very bottom of subsaharan africa,  but it is emerging from colonialism as functionally greek, and the far east of asia, which was massively influenced by greek thought via the spread of buddhism (which we know today was invented and spread by greek colonists tailgating on alexander), but which retained it's unique identity - china, korea and japan. japan and korea are under massive american military occupation. only the chinese are left standing as a non-greek cultural force that is alien to the rest of the world.

the chinese neither view the american continents as competitors or as adversaries, but as half empty lands awaiting colonization. the west needs to understand the chinese as an alien race with a unique culture, because they see us an inferior race to be replaced by chinese colonial expansion. if the chinese get their way, they will do to america and canada what the europeans did to the native americans. i don't want to get into it, but covid may have been a 21st century smallpox blanket, and it may have worked better than we realize.

this isn't about ideology. it's not a clash of civilizations....although it is. it's about race and it's about race because the chinese have made it about race.

trump is a goof and his policies won't survive him. we need deeper thinking that can see more than a foot in front of us and can plan for more than two years in the future, when a new president comes in and completely reverses course. however, there's a kernel of truth in recognizing the need for north american defence because the chinese are coming and we will need to work with the americans to stop them.

the thing we should be on the lookout for is chinese expansion in north eastern asia, which is nominally russian but historically chinese. there were previous skirmishes between russian and chinese emperors around the amur river, but the japanese had a brutal and genocidal occupation of manchuria during world war two (which collapsed the chinese state entirely) and the soviets annexed it in the process of driving the japanese out, thereby stealing a large area of and from historical china. in recent years, the russians have largely ceded sovereignty over greater manchuria back to beijing and they have in the process allowed chinese capital to move in, which is exporting raw resources to china without giving moscow a cut. all evidence suggests that they're just taking over with the intention of annexation. they're aggressively moving north up the coast very quickly. it will be when we find ourselves face to face with chinese jets rather than russian jets running chicken runs into alaska that we will know the day of conflict is upon us, and the chinese are ready to go.

the canadian policy needs to be to find a way to juggle it's need for sovereignty with it's need to help the americans contain the chinese by slowing them down. detente with russia would help us do this and should be seen as in our self-interest.

further, our massive border with russia should be strongly incentivizing us to support trump in minimizing tensions with the russians. our support for ukraine has been self-defeating and stupid - it's not at all in our interest to stoke tensions with the russians like this. you have to remember that trudeau is a failed actor that grew up on 80s blockbuster films full of anti-russian propaganda, and he saw russia as an enemy for that reason. he was not a deep thinker and this is not a well thought through policy for canada. he also had chrystia freeland, who is ukrainian, nipping at his heels like a chihuahua about it. we have a big border with the united states that is undefended; i believe our border with russia is actually bigger and less defended. the best way to protect ourselves from russian incursions is to become friends with the russians, which has been how we've defended ourselves from american incursions. for decades, it was the americans that were stopping us from doing that. if trump is seeking detente, and detente survives him, which it might, we should be taking advantage of that, not fighting it. turning russia into a friend will prevent our need to defend ourselves against them and potentially open up very lucrative markets across the arctic.

i know this got dumped on our lap, but we need better thought out policy than knee-jerking into a position where we define ourselves as enemies of the americans. i know they tend to piss us off. that's not a reason to shoot ourselves in the foot.

whatever policy positions are preferable to us, smart, enlightened leadership right now would begin with the realization that trump is a lame duck and that we should avoid rash overreactions. unless we ourselves decide otherwise, which would be very foolish, it is exceedingly likely that this is a blip in time and we'll look back and laugh at it.

the war in ukraine is not in america's interest, nor in russia's interest and not in europe's interest. it is only in china's interest.

canada will remain in the ukusa alliance.

starmer will likely not last very long.

but a neonazi germany could very well find friends in china that help it out of under the american jackboot and it should be a primary strategic goal of canadian government policy to help make sure that can't happen.

i mean, how did we get to the point where we have politicians like chrystia freeland, whose grandparents were nazis, telling us the germans are our allies?

the germans are not our allies.

the germans are our enemies; the russians are our allies, to help us fight the germans.

at the end of this, we're not going to be aligned with the germans.

we're going to end up fighting the germans.

again.

about the only rational explanation i can think of for the existence of an article like the one i just posted at the canadian state media outlet is infiltration by chinese influences, which could mean buying out the reporter or could be more structural and sinister than that.

the chinese have infiltrated mainstream western media very badly. i don't exactly want to call for a mccarthyite purge of media, but i would have tentative support for an investigation to figure out the depth of it.

more important than that is that, as readers and analysts of western media, individuals should be constantly on the lookout for pro-chinese biases.

china's official eu policy is support for "EU strategic autonomy.", which means helping it free itself from american occupation.

as i pointed out yesterday, the american occupation of europe is necessary to prevent it from returning to fascism, and the europeans will be nazis again in ten minutes if the americans ever leave.

talk of the europeans aligning against the united states is somewhat premature given the 100,000 american troops on the continent in major bases like rammstein in germany.

so, the reaction to trump's tariffs should be that canada should become a colony of europe, again.

no thanks.

worse, this is pre-modern carbon/industrial age thinking. we should take advantage of the opportunity to build a post-carbon economy and increase trade networks with south america, not turn into a factory to send tanks to neo-nazi germany. 

what is underlying this kind of thinking is actually a desire to build an alliance with china, which europe may very well find itself in. while the americans are intelligently looking for detente in russia, the chinese are looking to steal europe, and the european elite has a lot to benefit from aligning with the chinese, especially if it expects china to win.

when the shit hits the fan and war breaks out with the chinese, and it is inevitable, the russians will be more reliable allies than the french, if they can be. the truth is that europe is the weakest link, as it is not in their self-interest to remain under the american jackboot, and it never has been.

europe is not our friend and we need to stop pretending that it is.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-allies-europe-trump-1.7486978

have all you people opposed to "bank bailouts" not yet figured out that they were loans?

do you know what happens to your savings when they're put into a bank that goes bankrupt?

it was franklin roosevelt - not ronald reagan - that legislated the lender of last resort, to ensure that people didn't lose their savings and their mortgages when their banks collapsed, due to no fault of their own. this is a good and necessary policy, and it's why we have government, and what government is for.

this is the continued legacy of world war two (which ended with the occupation of japan, germany, italy and the uk) and it's offshoot, the korean war. 

these occupation forces remain required.

if winston churchill were alive today, the bnp would think he was too right wing and refuse to nominate him.

trump's pretty tame, in comparison.

the ceasefire in ukraine isn't a deal, but it's an agreement to keep talking about getting to a deal.

the russians have been pushed around for decades. they withdrew from east germany and handed over poland without a fight in return for security assurances about the expansion of nato that have been repeatedly broken. nato has a history of breaking it's promises and taking up a return to aggressive positions partly because there's a change in leadership every four to eight years. the russians can't stand this - they demand and need certainty and predictability. the russians hate chaos, chance, randomness. they are themselves extremely predictable, in turn.

there was a coup in ukraine in 2014, followed by a shifting of nato military assets into eastern europe. biden then immediately pulled out of afghanistan and the middle east and dropped everything in eastern europe. any observer would clearly conclude that biden was planning an attack on russia via militarizing ukraine as cannon fodder. so, putin hit first. the outcome has not been pretty, and russia has demonstrated a distinct level of operational incompetence, but it was a calculated move that was probably correct.

the russians moved into ukraine to block nato advances and are demanding their reversal to pull out. it's consistent, it's clear and it's rational. that's their position - to ensure their defenses cannot be breached by a swift nato offensive. their primary fear ought to be german rearmament.

the media is framing this as something like "putin will agree to a ceasefire if ukraine eliminates it's defenses" and are presenting that as unacceptable. they are deducing that trump has failed. this is dangerous and unhelpful as it's trying to prolong a war that's got us on the brink. this is because trump is a republican; they wouldn't frame the issue this way if trump were a democrat.

what is the truth here? the proposals being put forth by nato to defend ukraine include positioning offensive weapons systems in ukraine (labelled as defensive) and occupying ukraine with nato soldiers, called "peacekeepers". the nato peace proposals have consistently been ways to strategically move deeper into the iron curtain. nato must know that the russians know that they're bullshitting them.

yes, the price of peace will need to be an acknowledgement that ukraine - whose very name means buffer zone - will need to be abandoned. if nato will not abandon or partition ukraine, it is telling the russians it continues to plan to march eastwards. the russians have no choice but to put on their hats and say "nyet. enough. you stop here.".

will trump agree to this? i'm going to suggest he has to. 

i have repeatedly pointed out that it is necessary for the united states to occupy germany. we've completely forgotten this, somehow. the russians have not forgotten this. it was trump that shifted american troops eastward in order to enforce a protection racket, and as soon as america lifted one pinkie toe off their jackboot on the german neck, the spectre of german fascism instantly returned. 

it is more important that america occupy germany than that it try to conquer pockets of russia via ukraine, and the russians have proven that nato forces are not getting through the russian defences. they should give putin what he wants because they have to. the alternative is endless trench warfare and millions more dead for a few more inches of land, like world war one. we said never again, but here we are.

but i know my history and i know you want the russians on your side in a world war or protracted conflict. you don't want to fight the russians; that doesn't generally work out well. churchill was an asshole, which is why stalin got along with him.

the world's not a disney cartoon. there's bad people running worse empires. i want putin and russia to fight with the west in the imminent apocalypse and not against it; we need them, we can't win without them. in the long run, only the chinese win by a continuing russian-american hot or cold war.

i want detente.

only trump is crazy enough to do it.

they really should not do this.

they should rather remind everybody that the united states is a functioning democracy, in case some people need reminding.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-democracy-report-1.7486317

i appear to have had a post disappear around 13:17 this afternoon. weird. if that's the case, i don't remember what it was about. i was responding to emails and housing ads at the time.

(actually, i think t was an unwritten post about trump getting charged with criminal contempt. yeah. ok. i opened it but got distracted and didn't write it. the point i wanted to make was in determining responsibility, and it wouldn't be assigned to trump at all.)

this is another example of real world data completely debunking the religion of market theory, but it won't deter the faithful.

the religion says that if you cut consumption taxes the businesses will pass on the savings to the consumer. you take that on faith. in fact, they seem to have just increased prices and pocketed the difference, which actually makes far more sense and is far more rational and should have been predicted with a moment's though. it turns out it was a tax cut for businesses, not for consumers.

i actually don't blame them. it would have been a pain in the ass to change everything for a few weeks and the liberals seemed to be clueless about it.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/february-inflation-1.7486370

i could get a lump sum soon.

i had an extremely solid legal argument to overhaul the landlord and tenant board, but they threw a right-wing libertarian judge at me, and her order is entirely incoherent. she ignored my legal argument entirely, speciously claimed i was arguing about facts, inserted demonstrably wrong "facts" from the initial order that are being disputed on review and then used a judicial review argument to quash an appeal, which is all wrong. i did everything right; she even told me my presentation was outstanding, but she wasn't responding to the argument, but trying to generate a predetermined outcome, and i don't know if there was money involved. the judge actually openly admitted to conversing with the lawyer over twitter, which is not allowed and demonstrates the point. so i have to appeal it to a panel of three judges in london, ontario and am trying to schedule it for april. there's no other way to appeal it faster or better (i tried and got blocked by the court of appeal in a case i'd probably win on appeal but don't have the self-interest to push. the rules say i can do what i tried to do, but there's apparently a convention not to. fuck conventions. the court of appeal is supposed to be a creature of statute. if the convention contradicts the statute, you do away with the convention, but you have to get the supreme court to do it and the point is i wanted a faster appeal path not 15 years fighting a supreme court case). in the mean time, i'm fighting off an imminent eviction on april 1st and preparing for a major hearing on april 3rd where i should be awarded major damages for the harassment i've suffered through over the last two years. i'm trying to get an urgent injunction of the bullshit order in place on the grounds that the facts it relies on are demonstrably false, but the court staff appears to have been instructed to send everything to the gatekeeper, and she's just shutting me right down. i'm not being allowed to win this case. i don't know the extent of it.

now, there's a new gatekeeper. i need to try to get some things to him this morning.

if i can get a large enough award on april 3rd, looking for a cheap bungalow or small house in windsor for under 200K might be the most affordable and smartest option. i went over this a few months ago; it's actually cheaper to buy a house right now than it is to rent an apartment because the hike in interest rates got shifted to renters. as a renter, i'm being forced to pay the interest rate hike on the apartment i'm looking to rent, and i can't. it makes more sense to try to cut the middleman out if you're on the very bottom of the market. if you can sign a 40 year mortgage with enough of a downpayment. your mortgage will be less than market rent, on the same or comparable properties. but i need enough to put down.

i don't think the analysis gets it right, and i think the tariffs are only a part of it. i do agree that the tariffs are contributing to and may extend and deepen the downturn. however, i was expecting this and planned around it before the tariffs were announced. it's partly due to gravity - there's a vicious bubble in canada's housing market that just won't burst and prices have to come down - but partly due to the changes in immigration policy. a lot of these sales, especially in student markets, are indian or chinese or arab investors selling houses they can't rent to students. they will cram 30 kids into one house, and they get here and don't understand how awful that is; to them, it's just like home. if you can't own this old rickety mouldy house in downtown wherever at 0% interest and rent it out at 5000% profit to failing immigrant students anymore, what's the point? you sell it at whatever price you can, just to get rid of it, so somebody else can do maintenance on it. and that's good - these are the kinds of properties we needed back on the market to create more low income housing and the outcome that the shift in immigration policy was intended to create. when doug ford or justin trudeau talks about building housing, they mean building mansions in suburbia, and that's not what we need right now at all, we need more basement apartments, more apartment buildings, etc.

https://globalnews.ca/news/11085333/canada-spring-housing-market-tariffs/

this is why the bankers and investors and capitalist class always wins, they get us fighting each other, and repeatedly brainwash and trick us into choosing nationalism over worker solidarity.

it's divide and conquer.

read the constitutional papers. it's baked into the system to get the black slaves and the white servants fighting each other instead of the landholding class, which, if you look into it, were largely literally european aristocrats. divide and conquer of the working class is the actual foundational principle america is founded on, not democracy or freedom or even property rights. if you want a secondary source, read howard zinn (or listen to a youtube video of chomsky paraphrasing zinn for you).

not only should the auto workers in canada and the united states be standing in solidarity with each other to fight the capitalists, but they should be trying to build solidarity with auto workers in mexico and china, too. the actual solution to the issues trump brings up, to the extent they are valid, lies in unionizing the workforce in china to eliminate their absolute advantage in labour costs, which will of course also benefit chinese workers, which american workers should see as a primary policy goal. stop competing. it's stupid. when we compete against each other, only the bankers win.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/uaw-trump-tariffs-canada-unifor-why-1.7483459

why is shopper's drug mart, now owned by loblaws, being allowed to charge a fee to get a pharmacist to extend a prescription? of course they're cramming that down our throats and trying to position their pharmacists as replacements for doctors, as it converts the process of prescribing medication to a for-profit service on the market. if you give capital a foot in the door like this, it will exploit and abuse it, which is why they lobbied for it.

no, i don't want to pay a pharmacist to renew my prescription. shut the fuck up and call my doctor, you fucking vampire.

marketing access to pharmacists as a paid service outside of the structure of ohip should be against the law and punishable with jail time. if this is allowed to continue, it's going to eat away at and dissolve the existing system until there's nothing left of it, as successive services that we assign to doctors in the monopolized insurance structure get taken over by less qualified people that can be paid less to provide it on the market and largely sell it in department stores as a commodity. the universality clause in our healthcare system gets converted to a McHealthCare run by multinational corporations for profit.

the progressive conservatives and liberals are collaborating on a race to the bottom to get to a market failure in healthcare delivery.

they should abolish this "servers wage".

servers should make minimum wage, and that should result in higher prices for meals.

https://financialpost.com/personal-finance/majority-canadians-tips-too-high

so, stop retaliating by putting punishing import taxes on your own people.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/17/donald-trump-trade-wars-global-growth-inflation-oecd-uk-tariffs

trump is overseeing the most closeted gay cabinet in american history.

a coder named "big balls" is clearly a gay man. i think you're all missing the point.

look at who trump surrounds himself with - bearded mean, athletes, religious perverts.

they're a bunch of fags.

no wonder they're so homophobic.

i found south africa's case against israel at the icc to be distasteful, and i realize that land reform in south africa is, like land reform in the united states, complicated by the low levels of education and high levels of poverty experienced by poor white south african farmers, which have parallels to the origins of the populist movement in the united states (which makes trump's musk directed reaction that much more confusing, given his ideological alignment with the forces that would crucify those farmers on a cross of gold), but south africa's strategic value to the united states is of extreme importance and the main, major, substantive beneficiary of a breakdown in american-south african relations is china. there's a better way to deal with this that isn't so alienating; expelling the south african diplomat into the open arms of the chinese is just blatantly foolish.

i also curiously note that trump just shut down voice of america. that is a very weird thing to do.

it makes you wonder.

at the least, let me interject with this suggestion: can you take the time to talk to your advisors before you listen to musk, don coyote?

as a consumer, my concern about american dairy is the growth hormones. i would avoid purchasing american dairy very intentionally.

look for this symbol when you buy dairy in canada.

so long as this is maintained, as a consumer, i would be less concerned about import and export taxes collected by the state. i would just avoid american dairy by checking the labels.

i actually suspect that canadian dairy may develop a market in the united states on the basis of it being additive free if there was a more open market and it were labelled that way. it's a powerful selling point. however, the supply management remains essential to the canadian dairy industry and can't be up for negotiation.

https://dairyfarmersofcanada.ca/en/canadian-goodness/blue-cow-spotter/look-blue-cow-logo

i think they should tax all churches, mosques, synagogues, temples and other places people go to mumble at the wall.

https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2025-03/churches-in-canada-concerned-by-proposed-changes-to-tax-status.html

i instantly suspected this.

"51st state" is how canadians mockingly describe ourselves.

i bet almost everything trump has said is repeating what trudeau said to him.

"I’ll tell you how that came about," Rubio said of promoting the annexation of Canada. "OK, he’s in a meeting with Trudeau, and Trudeau basically says that if the U.S. imposes tariffs on Canada, Canada couldn’t survive as a nation state, at which point the president said, 'well, then you should become a state.'"

Trump, Rubio said, "made an argument for why Canada would be better off joining the United States from an economic perspective and the like."

"He’s made that argument repeatedly," Rubio continued. "And I think it stands for itself."

i'm probably too old to worry about this, but i'd have fled the country or gone to jail before i allowed some fascist government to enlist me as a trained murderer.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/how-canada-wins-mandatory-service

the delusional phoney loser sean hansel continues to try and trick people into thinking he's a member of rabit is wolf and that he wrote my music, which is false.

i've updated the official bandcamp site.

rabit is wolf was a rare collaborative project that also included a different person named sean as a guest vocalist and stunt noise generator. the rabit is wolf bandcamp site documents sean's contributions to my discography for the purposes of clarifying exactly what sean contributed in order to clear up various confusions.

this sub-bandcamp site is both comprehensive and maximal; it is exhaustive. if something does not appear there, it is because sean wasn't involved with it. at all. let there be no ambiguity.

as of 2025, i've been forced to officially kick sean out of rabit is wolf because he's being a phony piece of shit asshole for taking credit for music i wrote and performed. sean is now no longer a member of rabit is wolf, which now has only one remaining member, jessica murray/parent. this is largely irrelevant because there has not been any rabit is wolf material since 2002 and there has not been any chance of rabit is wolf reforming since 2010 at the latest, and in truth more like since 2005.

rabit is wolf existed from 2001-2003, but mostly over 2002. the picture of sean and i (and two other people) that is used for cover art was taken by sarah in early 2003.

https://rabitiswolf.bandcamp.com

the british have also realized this about mark carney.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/jul/11/how-economics-became-a-religion

joe's good at this stuff.

better than i am.

listen to him.

https://economicsociology.org/2014/06/11/free-markets-as-a-religious-belief/

peer reviewed empirical economic studies have suggested that the consumer carbon tax contributed to on the order of 0.25% or less of the inflation we were experiencing, which was nearing 10% at some points. i would expect mark carney to explain that to people, not to parrot ignorant talking points by his opponents and in the process severely damage his credibility as a talking head and economic manager.

conversely, his import tax policy is going to lead to 25% or higher increases on staples like orange juice, across the board.

it is predictable that the replacement of the intentionally very progressive consumer carbon tax with an intentionally very regressive consumption tax on imports will lead to a 100% or higher increase in inflation on staple goods, and you should expect that to be the consequence of this very stupid and economically ignorant shift in tax and fiscal policy.

if this is designed to win votes, make it backfire - do not vote for the banker. make the fuckers pay.

in fact, this is going to decrease my income by about 3%, which is substantive given how poor i am and is about the dumbest thing he could possibly do, if his intention is to benefit low income canadians. the carbon rebate was extremely beneficial for poor canadians. this will severely harm affordability measures for those with the lowest incomes.

further, this will have no discernible effect on inflation and carney should be embarrassed for parroting the overwhelmingly ignorant and economically specious and false argument that carbon taxes were responsible for inflation. people should take note of that, as it undoes his credibility as an economics expert and reduces him to a populist buffoon running on ignorant policies with no basis in empirical science. however, his replacement import taxes on american goods actually are a tax on everything that will increase the price of everything, and are coming without any sort of attempt to offset their extremely regressive nature. this is a double whammy on poor people, as it takes away something we rely on and then kicks us in the gut with a huge inflationary price hike immediately afterwards.

the result is more inflation and less money to offset it for those that need it. this will have real consequences for disabled people, for the working poor and for child poverty.

it seems like the conservatives have already won and we're already back to the ignorant backwardsness of ideological market economics, which is not a science but a religion. high priest carney is going to enforce his faith in markets on all of us, whether we share his belief system or not. i'm not in a liberal riding, i'm in an ndp riding, but i certainly won't be voting for them.

i'm going to have to vote for the green party on principle, and i hope carney loses. there's no difference between the liberals and conservatives at this point; when that happens, you have to stop voting for the liberals, to force them out of office and make them refocus. if the liberals are going to position themselves as indiscernible from the conservatives, i'd rather see the conservatives win and the liberals be sent into opposition.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mark-carney-drops-carbon-tax-1.7484290

i've updated the super mega total genesis discography for 1964-1969. because everything always begins with the beatles. pun intended.

i've become rather convinced that most of the synthesizer parts in the classic genesis records were played by david hentschel, and that brian eno was almost solely responsible for the ambient sections that dot genesis records through the mid 70s. this has ramifications for how i complete the super mega total genesis discography.

my understanding is that john burns was an engineer and that the lamb lies down on broadway should really say produced by brian eno. this would have actually been his first major production job, before the berlin trilogy, and even before his solo career even started.

mr. banks still has time to prove me wrong, but his solo material is distinctly lacking across the board.

i'm tired of reading about the awful but necessary things being done by israel in gaza, but the truth remains what it is, they won't release the hostages.

can the arab world get the idiots to release the fucking hostages, before there's nobody left to kill? or is that what they actually want?

i want to deconstruct the logic on this scurvy-generating policy of slapping import taxes on american orange juice (how many indigenous kids are you going to send to the hospital over this?), and then rationalizing it by saying you can buy orange juice from mexico or brazil instead. this naive application of market theory is going to argue that orange juice imported from mexico or brazil will remain lower in cost because it's not being taxed, while orange juice from the united states will price itself out of the market. this will harm american producers, who will no longer be able to compete in the canadian market.

is that what's going to happen?

well, that's not what i learned in school about markets or how markets work.

rather, what i learned about markets in school is that the orange juice industry is an oligopoly (bananas are a monopoly. have you ever seen the price of bananas vary from store to store by more than a cent? the banana industry is so controlled, it's like an organized crime syndicate. the upside is that inflation is low. the only commodity that's experienced less inflation than bananas is marijuana. shrinkflation aside, it's still $10/gram, right?) and that orange juice producers inside the oligopoly will consequently cooperate to set prices in a way that is consistent. what that means is that a modern, evidence-based, non-naive, non-ideological analysis of how the orange juice industry actually works in the real world (really existing market theory) would rather predict that if you put an import tax on american orange juice then manufacturers of orange juice from brazil or mexico would react by cooperating with american producers and increase their prices proportionally to maintain price consistency. mexican orange juice producers would not seek to compete with american orange juice producers, as that would not be in their self-interest, which is to maintain high prices to maximize profits for investors. in an oligopoly, competition is destructive and harmful and to be avoided at all costs, as a primary corporate objective.

oligopolies can be upset by the introduction of new manufacturers seeking to enter the market by undercutting the oligopoly, but it's hard to see where that's going to happen, unless we start growing oranges in greenhouses in southern ontario and the okanagan valley, which is not the worst idea i've ever heard. that may force the oligopoly to compete, until the new manufacturer can enter the oligopoly, or be targeted by it for destruction, dismantling or hostile takeover.

the result is that this attempt to minimize inflation by choosing commodities with replacements is naive and a poor understanding of how markets actually function in the real world. the import taxes, as regressive consumption taxes, will simply be inflationary across the board in the commodities being targeted. they will not harm american producers, they will just lead to inflation in the targeted commodities. further, this deconstruction of the orange juice oligopoly would apply to most other commodities being imported and most other industries, which are oligopolies or cartels in the real world, and which don't want to compete with each other, but want to avoid competing with each other. that's why we have huge government departments trying to force companies to compete with each other to salvage the facade of the make believe ideology of market economics - they don't want to compete, they realize competing is dumb. markets that have competition are called unstable; that's a definition. an unstable market is defined as a market that has competitive firms. all unstable markets tend to oligopolies as stable outcomes, which you can derive using differential equations, by using game theory (the nash equilibrium) or by just taking as an analogy to blackbody radiation or any other steady-state equation. markets tend towards equilibrium between producers and consumers; they don't tend towards competition, but towards the abolition of competition. then, the government has to step in and kick them in the ass and yell at them "start fucking competing.".

if we had real anarchy in the colloquial sense, the real end of government, the first thing that would happen is that this naive government creation we call the market economy would completely evaporate, and be replaced by feudal cartels and landowners colluding with each other to reduce everyone around them to slavery, leaving the workers and slaves and serfs and migrants to organize to try to survive. from that origin point, the workers could start building the kinds of societies that anarchists in the technical sense have long imagined and desired, by starting from the bottom up in collectives and communes, intended to size control from the oligopolies and feudal lords and cartels. markets cannot exist without governments to define, oversee and ultimately regulate them, as nobody would agree to these contrived and often childish rules that are in nobody's self-interest without an organized system of violence and control threatening them to behave via a monopoly on violence. no government means no markets.

that's what i learned in school, anyways.

if what carney ends up doing is reducing or cancelling the relatively progressive (in the sense that the wealthy pay more) consumer carbon tax and replacing it with a regressive consumption tax on imports by wrapping himself in the flag to sell it (and from this point on, i will refrain from using the word "tariff" or the terminology of "retaliatory tariff". i will instead strictly use the terminology of "import tax" or "regressive consumption tax"), that will work out to a massive shift in the tax burden from the wealthy to the poor, which is exactly the kind of policy that bankers love and have been pushing for the last sixty years. since 1970, we've seen an astronomical downloading in the tax burden, and continuing that shift seems to be the entire point of carney's fiscal strategy. he's also calling for a cancelling of the carbon tax rebate and to replace it with income tax cuts on the "middle class", which in liberal party terminology is just code for the rich. it's a massive shift upwards in wealth, consistent with and an extension of everything else that has defined the neo-liberal era, fiscally. i've been nailing trudeau for ten years for being too right-wing on economics, but he seems like a socialist in comparison to carney.

worse, he wants to balance the budget. this is not the time to concern yourself with the irrelevance of balanced budgets. nobody cares about balanced budgets, and to the extent that it concerns your average voter, most people just hear "cuts in services" when politicians talk about balancing budgets. canada is not in the poor fiscal position it was in in the 90s, and we have no motives to incur the kind of difficult cuts in government spending that we had to endure through the 90s to chase off the vampires at the imf, which mark carney is basically one of. the issues we have in front of us are poor healthcare delivery, mass poverty, a housing crisis, drug addiction, environmental degradation, climate change....we should be talking about dramatically increasing government spending as a percentage of gdp to deal with these massive problems we have in front of us that are in a large sense a consequence of previous attempts at budget balancing, not talking about balancing the budget. the imf isn't on our ass right now at all. in that sense, carney is very much the wrong person at the wrong time. shifts in the tax burden from the rich to the poor and cuts in services to balance the budget is not what canada needs at this time, but what canadians should be rallying around each other and strenuously fighting to avoid. that prescription will severely harm us, make us weaker and make us easier to invade.

i'm not going to support these shifts in fiscal and tax policy.

rather, i'm going to aggressively campaign against them and do everything i can to explain them to low income people so that they understand what the proposals are and don't vote against their own interests.

the simple analysis is that mark carney is a banker and his fiscal and tax policies reflect that fact. they're exactly what you'd expect from a banker. do you want to vote for a banker? does that sound like a smart choice to you?

"counterpunch"?

we're punching ourselves.

ugh.

this is what they want. we walked right into it.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/trumps-tariffs/article/canada-hits-back-at-trumps-latest-tariffs-with-298b-countermeasures-live-updates-here/

who should pay for the tariffs?

america should pay for the tariffs!

bizarrely, increasing consumption taxes might be popular in canada, right now.

but it's not a good policy and not an effective response, and it will just hurt low income canadians, while inflicting minimal harm on american capital. the real winner is the federal government, which gets a new revenue stream.

if they really wanted to fight back, they'd bring in export taxes, not so-called retaliatory tariffs.

that said, there's a relatively easy way to fix the regressive part of the tariff tax hike, and it's to send out tariff rebate checks, like they send out gst rebate checks.

it doesn't make it a good or effective policy, but it at least makes it less regressive, as a consumption tax increase.

broadly speaking, these retaliatory tariffs will have little effect on purchasing decisions by canadians and therefore have little effect on foreign suppliers. rather, they are just a means for the government to generate revenue, and are in a real sense an undoing of the gst decision in the 80s, which shifted import taxes to sales taxes. we're bringing back the tax importers used to pay before mulroney abolished it and converted it into a sales tax.

if that's what we're doing, can we cut the gst, then, too?

if it's just a revenue generating mechanism, which is what it is, it should be strenuously opposed as a cynical way to introduce a tax increase. why should canadians pay for this? let the americans pay for it. tax them, not us.

i'm not an economist. i have a math degree, some experience solving economics problems in calculus and algebra courses, a few economics themed math courses (third year linear programming was very economics focused, 4th year automata theory is a computer math course with applications in economics and linguistics, 4th year game theory had major applications in economics, i took a number of courses in differential equations from 2nd-5th year which are used in engineering and economics, etc), economics 101/102, a three year sociology of law degree and some experience reading policies, as a 44 year old. the number of math courses i took that were cross-referenced as economics courses, together with economics 101/102, would give me enough credits for a minor in economics, if i applied for it. that's it.

i would also have a minor in physics if i applied for it due to the number of math courses i took that were cross-referenced as physics courses, on top of the degrees in math, computer science and sociology of law. i am a little bit short on minors in music and english lit, but not by much. i have only taken a total of two history courses, both in greek history (classical and byzantine). then, there's a lot of topics where i have a credit or two  - biology, chemistry, psychology, philosophy, etc.

so, it doesn't take much education or very deep reasoning to figure out that these supposed "retaliatory tariffs" will have no meaningful effect on american suppliers and are just a regressive tax increase on canadian consumers.

if you paid 30% more for florida sourced tropicana instead of mexican sourced walmart orange juice, you'll pay an extra 25%, too. etc. these aren't major price hikes per unit, it's a dollar per orange juice jug, or a couple of extra bucks for a 40 of whiskey. it's just a regressive, revenue generating consumption tax, and we're being suckered into it by politicians wrapping themselves in the flag to promote it.

i don't support this at all.

consumption taxes are regressive.

tax them, not me.

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/politics/2025/03/12/canada-to-announce-298-billion-in-retaliatory-tariffs-on-us-official-tells-reuters/

see, this is why i didn't want ford talking to trump.

ford thinks that by lifting the export tax he's making progress towards a resolution that can benefit both sides.

in trump's mind, he just tricked the fatass dummy ford into removing the export tax, and then suckered him with a 25% tariff. and, basically, trump is right, that's exactly what he did. trump then defines that as being "smart" and "good negotiating". he "wins". further, he's proven that canada is weak and stupid and easy to take advantage of, so he will therefore continue to take advantage of canada in the future.

that's how america operates and has operated for 250 years.

if trump actually understood tariffs, he'd be dangerous.

but ford is a buffoon and he couldn't negotiate himself out of a parking ticket. he should at least send a trade negotiator. he won't, he'll go himself.

the feds need to lock him in a closet and tell him not to come out until they're done.

this is extremely alarming.

this can't continue.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/federal-report-deems-it-racist-to-criticize-canadian-anti-israel-activists

trudeau's government seemed to be intentionally exceedingly pro-muslim, and that seems to come from a personal interest in the religion from the man himself, who was famously photographed in blackface as an arab sheikh before he became prime minister and seems to view the aga kahn exceedingly fondly, perhaps as result of his mother having had an affair with him, as one of the dozens of women he was sleeping with as a young british aristocrat. 

justin trudeau has a far greater resemblance to the aga kahn than he does to pierre trudeau.

google "young aga kahn".

margaret was in the right place at the right time. the public line is that she was friends with his sister. right.

this is going to have to be addressed and moderated one way or another. it would be helpful if carney can set that in motion, even if he doesn't last very long in office.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/ivison-mark-carney-donald-trump-tariffs

well, we have to have a reason to think we're not americans and for a lot of people, the government of the country at most levels as the primary example, that's lacking. if canada wants to have the same culture, follow the same ideology, use the same laws, etc as the americans, then why not just become american? an american citizenship card is a valuable item.

i don't want to support a canadian government if it just wants to be all about free markets. if carney and ford and smith want to work a room by pushing market theory and competition, they may find a muted response. those are american ideas. one of the basic differences between canada and the united states has been that canada is a more socialist country, more willing to use government to solve problems, and less interested in market economies. if you ask a canadian on the street to come up with a reason they don't want to be americans, besides a beer commercial, the first and last thing a lot of us will say is we don't want to lose our healthcare.

there's an opportunity to enforce this, but the governments we've elected recently aren't aligned with historical canadian values. it was nice to hear chretien talk on sunday, as he might have been the last truly canadian prime minister and, at 91, he might represent the end of a culture and be the last of his people, so to say. yoda, indeed. justin trudeau, mark carney, chrystia freeland, michael ignatieff, stephen harper, doug ford, danielle smith, etc have their differences, but they all share the characteristic that they are culturally american and have spent their entire political careers wanting canada to be america lite, either as some kind of california north or as some kind of more enlightened texas. that's not going to work with a lot of people, who are going to wonder what the point is.

if we remember that being canadian means using government, and use it to retreat from the reliance on market-based solutions we've seen dominate politics since the turn of the century, we might find more people want to remain canadian. if we keep copying america, we might find people think there's less purpose to it, and they may start to look at the positives of the alternative.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-annexation-destabilizing-canada-1.7479890

jean chretien called for export taxes in his speech to liberals on sunday night. like i said before,

chretien is this weird yoda character that speaks broken english and is somehow always right about everything, despite coming off as not very bright.

if there's a keeper of the canadian swamp, it remains mr. chretien. none shall pass.

if this is the policy being written up - export taxes on potash, aluminum, oil, electricity - trump had better back off before he gets hurt.

think of it like this: instead of having our workers build commodities to export to the united states, let's have them focus on building housing for current and future canadians to live in, in a massive make work project, like we haven't seen since the 70s.

this is what our government would do if it was actually socialist. it will probably not do any of this, it will make us pay more for oranges instead, which is stupid and pointless.

i'm actually surprised that ford slapped the tax on electricity, but hey. i'll take it.

it would be reasonable to put a 50% export tax on oil exports until the american president stops the flow of illegal guns into canada. they're killing us; gangsters and thugs.

we also need to get really tough on the amount of firearms entering canada from the united states.

this is unacceptable and needs to stop. now.

let's understand what trump did.

ontario put a 25% tax on electricity going to the us, in response to the tax that trump placed on his own people to buy canadian goods. trump's taxes are not targeted, and make no sense. he's not trying to protect industries. he's not trying to help businesses. he's just trying to dissuade american consumers from buying canadian products, broadly. it's not intended to help america in a specific way, it's intended to hurt canada in a broad way. it's the economic equivalent of a terrorist randomly shooting rounds into a crowded shopping mall, which is a fitting analogy for an american president.

what canada is saying is "if you want to tax your people to buy our products, we're also going to tax your people to buy our products, but we're going to tax the items that you have to buy from us, because you don't have any choice, and we're going to use it to mitigate the job losses resulting from your attempts to hollow out our industries".

in response, trump increased the taxes on his own people even higher.

well, we should increase our taxes on them even higher, too, then - but ensure those taxes are targeted on goods that they can't find an alternate supplier for. 

in fact, the feds should slap a 50% export tax on aluminum, too. 

they have nowhere else to get it. they'll have to pay it.

take the money generated from the export taxes and use it to build subsidized housing and more hydro plants, with labour supplied by construction workers laid off in the steel mills.

i want to clarify that canadian governments should mostly choose materials that are purchased by businesses to put export taxes on. the idea is to transfer the costs to american companies, because that is what trump is doing, he's targeting canada's corporate sector for hostile takeover.

some steel workers may benefit from retraining. we have a housing crisis - tell them to become construction workers. i mean, it's the most obvious keynesian make work plan in the world sitting in front of us - take the laid off workers and tell them to build houses. in terms of sterile, by the book economic metrics that nobody actually cares about, boosting housing makes everything look better on paper.

steel is a gross, dirty industry, anyways. i would rather offshore steel production. let the americans ruin their lakes.

that's fine. the export tax will mitigate it. that's the point.

an export tax on nickel would also work, as the americans get almost all of their nickel from us.

trump has no idea what he's doing. he legitimately thinks canadians pay the tariffs.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/11/trump-raises-canadian-steel-aluminum-tariffs-to-50percent-in-retaliation-for-ontario-energy-duties.html

if i was a conservative voter, and i was asked to pick between pierre polievre and mark carney, that would be a no brainer; i would pick carney in a second. polievre would be roundly defeated if carney were to primary him in the conservative party.

however, i'm not a conservative, i'm a socialist on the far left of the liberal party, and my ballot choice - which does not consider polievre, but is between carney, singh and may - makes me rather unenthusiastic about voting for the liberals. 

i'm going to suggest that you're going to see a lot of volatility in the polls, as the right abandons the goof polievre for the far more acceptable carney and the left finds itself in a crisis point, as it clearly doesn't want to vote for singh, for good reasons. he's a religious nut, and not in line with the left's tendency to embrace secularism, which is a longstanding issue with the ndp, which has always had this very undesirable religious streak that has sent secular leftists to the liberals instead.

a few months ago, this looked like a yawny election where little would change. i know the liberals were polling badly, but i didn't take that seriously. now, it looks like the conservatives might find themselves cockblocked by the liberals, who may just end up teetering to another minority, as they cave to the greens. 

i could only vote green or not at all at this point.

the outcome may not look much different in terms of seat counts, but it would be an upending of the political spectrum that is long overdue. the conservatives keep electing goofs and running them for prime minister, and conservative voters have long been looking for some escape mechanism. they don't have another harper to save them from the goofery, apparently. carney is exactly what they want. conversely, left-liberals have become increasingly frustrated and alienated by trudeau and the switch to carney - at 86% of the vote, apparently, according to the liberal politburo - may indicate they've given up and moved on.

good.

now, can we ditch the tariff on orange juice, before we all end up with fucking scurvy?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-electricity-tariffs-ford-trump-1.7479180

this was a shady process and you probably shouldn't take it seriously but he is going to be prime minister, at least for now.

86% huh?

that's almost as good as putin.

putin got 87.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68592781

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.