Much of the tv I see appears to indicate a post-apocalyptic future where it doesn’t really matter anymore at all. Perhaps that’s the attraction: ten days in the gym and all those government guys are Rambo.
I watched a tv documentary yesterday about the rise and fall of the original Russian oil oligarchs, and how the St Petersburg mafia was slowly introduced to displace the original wide boys with Putin’s homies. Then, that accomplished, the gas network was next.
The program explained how Germany was seduced into becoming Russia’s foreign end of the new gas line, cutting out the value of the existing Ukrainian pipes and turning Europe hostage to continuation of the through-Germany flow. Genius. It all left Ukraine a bit derailed, if not irrelevant…
It seems, in glorious hindsight, how dumb was Europe to pin its defence faith upon USA fidelity. Now, the blinkers torn off, we see how naïve that was. I wonder how long Europe will be able to retain access to LuLa, amongst other foreign Internet addresses… we, as Europeans, should have been fiercely independent in everything from the start.
LuLa is a Canadian site, although you'd never guess that from the contents of this particular thread.
The French islands of St Pierre and Miquelon are about 15 km off the coast of Newfoundland so you could make a case that Canada should be part of the EU. I, for one, would love to have access to smaller European-spec cars instead of what's currently for sale around these parts. (Btw, on our way to a local coffee shop yesterday, the local Ford dealer had a sign up advertizing a $25,000 rebate on some pick-up truck model or other. Not long ago, you could buy an entire car for $25,000. Imagine how you'd feel if you had bought that same truck model two months ago at full sticker! The thing is probably rusting by now.)
Trumpistan propaganda says that the US spent a lot of money protecting the rest of the world. It was a bad move for the rest of the world to fall into the trap of taking advantage of that, which would be true even without the rise of Trump. Trump tried to make it sound as if all these countries were taking advantage of US largesse. They can blow that smoke out their arse end. That would not have happened if it had not suited the US, so they can keep that revisionist history for the xenophobic Florida high school history classes where it belongs. The US got a lot in return for keeping military bases in Europe and elsewhere or they would not have done so. Besides other advantages they got to be the de facto leader of the "free world" that has both hard and soft power advantages. If they back away from that and Europe et al fund their own defense, a good idea regardless, it will also mean that they will call their own shots and won't need/want to bend to the will of the US. Americans say that they want to be isolated, let's wait to see if they
really want that. I wouldn't trust Trump's analysis, he still thinks the US runs the world and that their economy is doing well. Some of it it of course. For an isolationist-leaning country, they sure are sticking their nose and bombers into a lot of different countries lately.
Listen to Trump's latest public pronouncements and tell me if you'd trust the orders of that clown when he tells you to charge out of the trench. He is not a well man, he's not firing on all cylinders. Funny how many of the people who objected to age related senility on the part of Biden are quieter now. It's all partisan bs all the way down.
Canada's own lack of investment in the protection of our arctic waters is shameful. I think it's because most people only ever see the flatened view of the world in those maps and don't have a spinning globe on their desks, so they don't see how close Russia is to Canada. That's a complete failure of imagination, a multi-generational one. Of course, Canada and the US patrolled the north jointly because we assumed we had common interests. It should have woken us up when Lyndon Johnson and Bush were annoyed with Canada not wanting any part if the Vietnamese and Iraqi military "exercises". Not surprisingly, the goals of the two countries no not always align, even though they often do and should.
In other news, CBS may be turning into the new FOX. The irony makes me laugh out loud. On these pages in the past I've had to listen to the usual suspects preach about the bias of publicly funded news agencies. What a load of bullshit. The CBC, BBC, TVO and PBS are the ONLY ones I pay attention to. The fact that all politicians at some point criticize them for being biased is to my mind the main indicator that they're at least trying to do journalism. The commercial network news suppliers are ratings-based clickbait jokes. Did they think no one would notice?
