Ketchup running down the fuselage

Isn’t there some kind of ego appeasement fee you have to pay once you’re “invited”? With such a thin pretense he might as well just directly shake countries down for cash

Reality is putting The Onion out of business

Watching this all happen again is giving me déjà vu. It hasn’t even been a year yet

The consequences of Dec 2024 Great Syrian setback keep getting worse and worse.

sick

They’re going to rename BC “American Columbia”

The AB sovereignty movement is kind of a joke. They can barely clear 30% support (although IIRC half of UCP voters are in favour, the idiots).

Fun fact: Support for AB leaving Canada is higher in Quebec than it is in Alberta, lmao.

Certainly the Burgerlanders will try to exploit whatever they can, but there’s no way they’re going to get popular support for such a maneuver.

British Colombia

That’s a new one

if I had a nickel for every country that starts with c, borders amerikkka, and needs chinese dongfeng missiles stationed in it to guarantee its sovereignty, I would have more nickels than you would expect

Wow he strong armed Iceland to the table

It’s a big exercise involving F-35s and F-22s. It’s an annual air national guard exercise called “Sentry Aloha”.

For those who wonder why the air national guard needs training like this, it’s not purely a defensive force, see the specialist national guard unit from Vermont that deployed to both Iran and Venezuela to suppress their air defences with F-35As. Also defensive counter air is a mission set in of itself, Hawaii is far out to the west.

in case takaichi gets any ideas it’s for the best

From the same people saying the Iranian state needs to be uprooted and destroyed so they can have freedom, comes “if we vote really hard the masked bigots and fanatics will stop killing and kidnapping us”

Have you considered China is trying to infiltrated New York and turn it to a People’s Republic undemocratically?

https://www.newsweek.com/mamdani-china-communist-party-democratic-socialists-11370804

Beware the evils of the CCP!

(LMAO)

yeah but in China you get fined for burning coal (the government will build you a new free home with modern heat exchangers powered by renewable energy)

But have you consider that two things can be true at the same time, though? And yes, I say “can be” because then it becomes unfalsifiable. China “can be” authoritarian too, potentially, also Uyghur Uyghur Tibet Tibet tinyman tinyman Taiwan Taiwan

Hochman was reportedly released

booo. still, is this the first time HRF has managed to get somebody detained? (not a criticism, they are doing good work)

that can only work for countries like France

we had this debate already back in 1914 and the answer is NO

I think Europe’s time is kinda done. They’re gonna be like the Greek city-states after the rise of Macedonia, a league of nominally independent but wealthy states that gets passed around by Great Powers until eventually one decides to annex them outright.

I do think we have to focus on building a left movements on National levels, but those movements should strive for a genuine Pan-European union and should allow members of any Nationality to join, with a plan that is not based on metaphysical thinking, the way Brussels has been going at it.

We should take advantage of the amount of interconnection we already got going on, study what’s been failing about it in detail and how to address it.

Is this the time for the european left to do left wing nationalism?

You can do “nationalism”, in that you should give off the impression that you want to make peoples lives better in your country and a way to do that is to use the relevant symbols and language for that, every country probably has unproblematic stuff like that, think Lincon for america, the carnation revolution for portugal, the french revolution for france and so on, idk what the uk has though.

I think generally, there are four probable paths for Europe,:

• “Global Southification”: EU economies continue to stagnate with no GDP growth, industry lags behind the US and China, inefficient multiparty parliamentary democracies with parties in “divided coalitions”, political entities that have ruled for decades collapsing overnight, etc. Acceptance of decline. In some ways the UK is here.
• “Israelification”: alignment of national security interests with core US interests, rapidly increased military buildup with lots of advanced technology from the US and elsewhere, realignment of societal values and norms around religion. Strong GDP growth. Poland for instance.
• “Japan/South Koreaification”: lots of military buildup, US dependent but with domestic focus, but society remains secular, national security aligned with the US but not fully. Economy and military is big enough to stand alone in some way, but stagnation of GDP growth: Germany could be an example.
• France: full domestic military, big focus on independence, nuclear armed with fully independent technology. Military technology may not be as advanced as US partner nations, but is fully independent. Economic and social stagnation, but not accepting decline.

How does the left respond to this? Israelification is basically a nightmare scenario for any left wing movement. Joining up with the global south may be tempting, but if the European nations are doing this because they lack hard power and are facing stagnation/decline, that’s quite worrying. Becoming like Japan or South Korea can go either way, see the latest elections in both nations. South Korea elect someone more on the left, Japan on the right. A France scenario means the greatest amount of sovereignty, but getting there requires the greatest amount of sacrifice.

I think pan european nationalism is inevitable at this point. It will be the last escape valve for the EU’s elites. Even the bureaucratic elite will have to realize that it doesn’t really matter to them if Von der Leyen’s position is subject to elections in a Federal Europe. The Left will either be ahead of the curve or behind of the curve in this matter.

Oppressor nations can’t do progressive nationalism. And i doubt most nationalisms in the modern-day are progressive.

it’s a little inadvisable from economic perspective, being laundering operation is all uk had (well, and rolls royce engines)

Brexit 2

Its a very interesting speech, though I’m now even more sure the US will invade us lmao

This part in particular is huge imo In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel, later president, wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless. And in it, he asked a simple question: How did the communist system sustain itself?

And his answer began with a greengrocer. Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: “Workers of the world, unite!” He doesn’t believe it. No one does. But he places the sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists.

Not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.

Havel called this “living within a lie.” The system’s power comes not from its truth but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true. And its fragility comes from the same source: when even one person stops performing — when the greengrocer removes his sign — the illusion begins to crack.

Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.

For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

This fiction was useful. And American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.

So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals. And we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.

This bargain no longer works.

The anticommunism is annoying and expected, and the reason its there is obvious (porky is more scared of fascism than communism as always). But outright calling the whole rules based international order a fiction to serve american hegemony that canada supported bc it benefitted us is pretty new i think?

Like others who follow the news more closely can correct me, but has any canadian head of state called the US a global hegemon before? Is hegemon even a word politicians in the west usually use? I associate it more with global south and especially chinese politicians.

My impression is very much that carneys trying to hitch canada onto the winning horse (china). If europe and canada had any geopolitical sense theyd stop backing ukraine immediately imo, if only to stockpile weapons to fight the yanks (and ideally to restore ties with russia) But the speech is like “we epically supported ukraine” so it sounds like he wont try that

I think like. For a neoliberal he is surprisingly geopolitically aware and honest. He is realistic about power dynamics. Unlike the constant smug EU projection that leads to them thinking they can dictate terms to Russia etc

next sentence: and now I’m going to pledge another $30b towards ukraine so they can continue to fight against putinitler

that’s sarcasm, but per the complete speech:

We’re doing something else: to help solve global problems, we’re pursuing variable geometry. In other words, different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests. So on Ukraine, we’re a core member of the Coalition of the Willing and one of the largest per capita contributors to its defence and security.

People sometimes question why so many countries take seemingly bad/naive deals with the US, but like, they also know it’s a bad deal. No one expects America to honor shit at this point. It’s just that the alternative is typically worse, especially in the short term (which is what most politicians care about). It’s reached the point where the US can bully the entire EU.

he went hard.

France also rejected it, but Trump threatened to sanction them for doing so.

And here we see why countries have agreed to go to this pointless meeting. It’s a ceremony, Trump wants them to kiss the ring and the US is taking note of those who don’t.

It’s apparently supposed to be an alternative to the United Nations. Will the United Nations have it’s League of Nations moment, or is it another silly Trump scheme?

Brazil said they were ‘in consultations with other countries’ which I read as ‘asking everybody else what the fuck is going on’.