Right To Left

I'll assume you're not old enough to recall when Henry Kissinger and other geopolitical advisers were devising a plan to drive a wedge between China and the Soviets over 50 years ago now. At that time, the Soviets were the leaders of the Communist bloc and though Mao was more extreme in rhetoric, the Nixon admin went by Kissinger's plan to curry favour with China to turn against the Soviets. In 2016, it seemed like Trump's main adviser in the first year - Steve Bannon was trying to hatch a reverse plan: have Trump admin work with Russia in alliance against China. If Putin ever did give it passing consideration, it wouldn't last after Democrats and Maddow on TV every night with the idiotic russiagate conspiracy theories. Now with idiot Joe in charge, it's apparent that the braintrust behind him is so arrogant that they think they can make enemies of everyone: Russia, China, Iran, Turkey except for Israel of course! Add in that secondary sanctions as they're called, are economic warfare against supposed allies who have trade relations with countries that the US doesn't like, and it's clear that the US leaders think they are 10 times bigger than they actually are! So, good luck with all the patriiotic bullshit!

I guess that's what it says on his cue cards!

The insanity breaking out today in America likely has a lot to do with so many Americans getting that subconscious feeling that the dream is over. Back in the 70's when I was getting out of school, along with other boomers, times were bad for getting work..especially good paying jobs, but we all seen it as a temporary problem. I'm not getting that feeling today from anyone, no matter how much hopium they try to spread around!

You didn't read beyond that first paragraph, so I'm not going to bother! Believe whatever the hell you want! It won't matter for long the way things are going now anyway!

I'm pretty sure I've had this apologetic excuse thrown at me before a number of times when I used to engage with the God vs. atheism debates. The shallow contention that they red-underlined FREELY gave their possessions to the big pot is laughable, because if everyone else is doing it, you're going to feel a strong level of coercion to do likewise....especially when that holy spirit hitman is invisibly circling above everyone with his sword! Otherwise why would Ananias try to tempt fate and secretly hold back? (He didn't realize Mr. Holy Spirit was watching everything he was doing!) The socialism of that first Christian community (which has served as the model for so many Christian fundamentalist communes for centuries) is more fully explained in Acts ch. 4, and I guess that's why all of the capitalist christian apologetics that need to explain away these chapters just start at ch 5.

Agreed! The only real forest management is backing off and allowing nature time and space to recover.

We were actually living within the limits of our local environments for 200,000 years! Because our 'primitive' ancestors didn't have the luxury of being stupid and blithely disregarding nature as the more recent farming cultures as directed by their sky daddy warrior gods who told them to just go forth and plunder nature. That's why there was a dramatic shift in religious thinking starting in the Middle East and spreading outward to conquer the world. Today, the worst evangelists of western supremacism and colonialism aren't monotheists out to spread their cult. For the past 30 years, the apostles of capitalism and environmental exploitation have become "rational" atheists who claim to be acting on principles of reason and evidence. But first they had to bury all the evidence from sociology and anthropological research to promote their new religion of Evolutionary Psychology....which tells us that science, technology and capitalist values are paving the way for a better and brighter future...if you believe any of it!

Well, I'm glad you're at least doing some thinking on this subject! Societies with a more collective attitude are going to fare better dealing with pandemics than selfish individualists who believe their personal freedoms negate whatever everyone else in the world wants to do. Sociologists and cultural anthropologists have noted and been analyzing the differences in western and eastern thinking on collectivism vs individualism for years now. Radical individualism is viewed negatively in most of the Far East (regardless of communist or capitalist) in a similar way that westerners have been brainwashed against all forms of socialism...even for extended family members over here! In deep history, we were all commies, because that's how small hunter-gatherer societies survived for most of human history until starting about 10,000 years ago. But, even after the large river valleys began to drain and become productive farmland along the Nile, Mesopotamia, Indus and Yellow River, as populations grew, that didn't mean they all followed similar cultural patterns -- even on hierarchy. From the earliest digs in Egypt (even before the pyramids were built), what can be discerned about local culture was that they were already patriarchal as soon as permanent settlements were established. Ruling hierarchies with kings (who later became god-kings), priests, craftsmen and women, tenant farmers and enslaved foreigners became the norm. A similar thing happened in the city states of Sumer BUT NOT along the Indus Valley .... for unknown reasons! Now, one thing that does cause breakdown besides fights over dwindling food supplies is Pandemics! Early on, most of the people moving in the earliest settlements and cities were disease-free (because most of the communicable diseases we are still afflicted with today come from raising and eating livestock). But as the settlements became crowded, the odds of mutating viruses and bacteria jumping to us from our food sources also increased. How would people in a settlement respond to newcomers who happened to be sick or got sick soon after, and worse: people already living in the community started showing signs of the same illness? Well, long before a germ theory of disease, they would react the same way a lot of people react today when they associate a disease with foreigners! The higher population densities for thousands of years in the Far East, may be why some of the customs seem cold and remote to westerners and other outsiders....bowing towards others when saying hello or meeting for the first time instead of shaking hands...let along hugging and kissing in some parts of the world...that's considered too much in the west! One thing I have noticed for some time already, is that when it's cold season or there's a flu epidemic, people who come from China, Hong Kong, Korea or Japan have typically been the only ones wearing masks. That's what's so weird to me about this pandemic. Everywhere I go now, just about everyone is wearing a mask. And when the most alarmist of the public health officials like Fauci and a couple of experts who are always talking to the CBC up here, say we might have to keep wearing masks for 10 years, that would turn into a permanent cultural shift for us after the pandemic is over...and we're waiting for the next one!

Well, let's look at the "China Virus" talk in particular, that started after Trump realized/or was told by his advisers that there would be no cheap way to end the pandemic and reopen everything. After that Trump, and mostly rightwingers, but a lot on the other side have been repeating BS conspiracy theories. Anyone who looks at the garbage coming from Rebel Media ..... which likely originates at Epoch Times, seem to be last to realize that China had to do with the Covid-19 pandemic first. And back in January of last year, some of the Democrats were gloating that the new pandemic had found the Achilles heel to take down China's economic growth. When it comes to "what to do about China," I want to see real stories that are based on real evidence behind the claims of Hong Kong and Uyghur genocides that make no sense looking at real numbers. And on this count, since I touched on the propaganda and misinformation on another thread that accompanied the Iraq Invasion 18 years ago. Looking back, it's demoralizing now to go back over a time when MSM wasn't all lined up as paid hacks for government leaders and agencies, and would actually challenge claims made at press conferences. But now, the supposedly 'liberal' MSM and their smaller supposedly conservative brethren on the other side, will never question any wisdom coming from the White House, State Dept., CIA, FBI etc.. Then there is the added issue of who does and who does not have moral standing to accuse others of war crimes and human rights abuses. One thing for certain, it should not be the same country claiming genocide elsewhere, that can be tied to more than a million dead Iraqis, half a million dead Syrians plus millions of refugees who've fled Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, because of US drones, bombs dropped and killings and attacks committed by "moderate" rebel allies in these countries, who have been interchangeable the same Al Qaeda groups known as terrorists when they attack US or US allied targets, or some rando Muslim gets to buy a lethal gun before going off on a rampage for whatever reasons and kills 10 people! It's difficult to tell truth from lies when you have so little confidence and so little respect in our 'news' media sources today. But, from what I can gather over the past 20 years, we....as part of the US-NATO umbrella have more to be found guilty of than whatever China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela or Yemen are really doing over there!

According to urban legend now, when Slow Joe was still out on his very limited campaign in the summer of 2019: Biden told donors at an event at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan on Tuesday evening that he would not “demonize” the rich and promised that “no one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change,” Bloomberg News reported. Never mind that this was coming from the same dweeb who's spent almost half a century in Washington, sucking up money from big donors and willing to do anything to please the high rollers, what's really important with that statement is that Joe was already declaring that a new Biden Administration would just pick up where the Trump Admin left off on the issues that are important to them MONEY - and how to get more of it! And because Biden's policies on the border, Covid-19, military spending, foreign wars, top down stimulus spending, stopping any bills to raise minimum wage and public healthcare etc., all of the fighting between Democrats and Republicans has been relegated to race and other identity issues, along with some social issues that have little impact on the bottom line for business. Both sides go to war against each other over who is/is not a racist; whether or not to rename schools and public buildings that had been named after slavery-supporting rebels like Robert E. Lee, banning the rebel Stars n Bars Confederate States flag etc.. Not saying that these issues aren't important to some people, but whether or not a school is named after Robert E. Lee is not going to put food on the table for anyone, or deal with pressing economic issues, where the two combatting parties walk in unison, regardless of hysterical media and social media from partisans of both sides, who are mostly focused on distracting working people on side issues, while its same old/ same old in Washington!

"Conserving nature" Seems you're referring to a time before they turned into neoliberals on trade and tariffs 40 years ago. Back in the real old days, it was the Liberals who were always pushing for cutting import tariffs/ while Conservatives wanted to protect domestic production and commerce. And then sometime between the late 70's and the early 80's they switched ends with the Liberals to some extent. Not all, but the few protectionists left were found mostly in the Liberal Party (John Turner). And since the overall economy kept growing in 80's (along with growing levels of inequality cause of the loss of good jobs with factory closures) young people just kept working harder...even if for less money, and it's not until 40 years after that most of us have woke up and realized the numbers show us we were screwed over by big business that was already intending to outsource most of their production to Mexico, China and other Far East nations with dirt-poor wages, no unions and no health, labor or environmental laws either. When this bullshit 'free trade' narrative was first being pushed at us, we were given the snow job that .... oh sure, a few businesses will close...but they'll be the most inefficient ones that are most labour intensive....not the good jobs! Well, that one sure aged well! Our specialization and increasingly extended trade lines have made us more at risk of shocks caused by everything from disease pandemics to disruptions caused by penis-shaped ships stuck in canals! Like the Austin Powers comedy sketch that's still going on over in Egypt! This latest blockade is going to cost more than the 8 year closure of the Suez Canal after the 67 War with Israel that left 15 cargo ships stuck in the canal zone for the duration and thousands of larger ships having to be built, that would just go around Africa and avoid using the Canal. Even though it would add greatly to shipping costs to Europe. Anyway, not a free trade fan, no matter who's pushing it! But it seems like your Conservatives first need is to decide what it is they actually stand for after 40 years of economic liberalization. Those were not the 'conservative' values espoused by Stanfield, Dief or major provincial PC leaders. They need to get to policy debates and proposals before they spend more time on their leadership pageant to choose the next spokesmodel for the Party

If it wasn't for the increasing shift toward identity race-based politics in recent times, I might actually agree with you. But, that's not the world we live in today! Even if we're talking white people, I remember a couple of stories about French restaurant owners in New York City closing down after the French president (Jacques Chirac) refused to join "the coalition of the willing," and went on a little too long about how the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 (anyone still remember this?) was a violation of standards of international law and especially - rules of war. And sure enough, a cynical motley combination of Republican politicians and Fox News started a campaign to erase the word 'french' from American terminology.... so french fries became FREEDOM fries, and something similar with french toast, french dressing and other earth-shaking important language alterations. And it seems like there were still enough idiots in NYC two years after 9-11 (nothing to do with Iraq or Saddam) in 03, to organize boycotts of french restaurants, vandalize and threaten staff, and lead many longtime owners of French restaurants to shut down at least temporarily rather than risk worse attacks from all the clowns running around back then who believed Curveball's WMD stories and that their country had a need and even a right to just go barnstorming in to a foreign country and try to overrun everything...turning over its oil industry to mostly US companies. Everything french was under attack because France had a president who wouldn't go along with the invasion. Now, if that shit can happen if someone thinks you're French, what the hell happens if you're a member of a visible minority and confronted by neanderthals who think everyone who's Asian is Chinese and also a spy or something worse! Or just wants to do their part to go to war with China.....without actually having to sign up and go fight it!

To each his own! I don't want to hear happy talk that's all bullshit. Krishnamurti was honest and ultimately a realist. And that seems to shock and offend a lot of people who can't handle it.

Walls don't work when nobody can build them! What happened to the wall Trump was supposed to build AND Mexico was going to pay for?

QUOTE From Whom?? It's just a bullshit statement of yours presented as fact, and used to frame your manipulation of bible quotes....which would be called blasphemy in some circles! You have to reach back to the worst of the worst of the old testament, but you still can't cite a verse for your claim that "God is a capitalist." I didn't know God needed money......wait a minute....change that! His emissaries on earth sure demand enough money on his behalf! The best example of biblical communism is found in the book of Acts, starting in Ch. 4 continuing in Ch. 5: 32 Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. 33 And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. 34 There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold 35 and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. 36 Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus, 37 sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet. 5 But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, 2 and with his wife's knowledge he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles' feet. 3 But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? 4 While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God.” 5 When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last. And great fear came upon all who heard of it. 6 The young men rose and wrapped him up and carried him out and buried him. 7 After an interval of about three hours his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. 8 And Peter said to her, “Tell me whether you[a] sold the land for so much.” And she said, “Yes, for so much.” 9 But Peter said to her, “How is it that you have agreed together to test the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.” 10 Immediately she fell down at his feet and breathed her last. When the young men came in they found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. 11 And great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things. Now, everyone blathering on about socialism doesn't work, would sure hate living in that early Christian community in Jerusalem, where the holy spirit acts as the all-knowing hit squad to catch any new converts who wanted to keep just a small portion of their wealth, like Ananias and Sapphira.

I haven't been keeping a list, but if Foreign Policy Magazine has this about leftwing political parties in the US and England, it shouldn't be too hard for anyone to find: In Pandemic Policy Response, the Left Has a Leg Up A week before he was replaced by Keir Starmer as leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn gave an interview to the BBC. The coronavirus pandemic has discredited a decade of Conservative Party-imposed austerity, Corbyn claimed, and vindicated the case for the kind of expansive public spending he had called for during the 2019 U.K. general election. In an article for the Guardian published on May 2, less than a month after suspending his campaign for the presidency, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, writing with U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, echoed Corbyn’s sentiments. Corbyn’s crushing defeat at the hands of Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the general election on Dec. 12, and Sanders’ subsequent inability to consolidate control of the U.S. Democratic Party primary race, might have marked the end of the democratic socialist movements that have emerged in Britain and the United States over the past five years. Instead, as the coronavirus crisis has deepened, forcing more and more people out of work and onto the benefits system, leftists on both sides of the Atlantic see radical political space opening up in front of them. But what I was referring to (before my internet crashed earlier today) were stories like this one from Kerala...the poorest state in India...and also the one with the least amount of extreme poverty.....take that Mumbai, and your dotcom billionaires! From mid-July, within hard hit India, the richest states were seeing the greatest spread and numbers of deaths, while the poorest states, with fewer resources, performed much better handling the pandemic: How a Communist-led government in Kerala responded to the COVID-19 pandemic Journalists in the mainstream Western media often show surprise even as they report on governments in the Global South navigating the COVID-19 pandemic with relative success compared to the chaos in the U.S. and UK. But the success story that they narrate is typically one of individual leadership or culture, as if individuals and cultures are not embedded in political spaces. This article is about Kerala, a state in the southern part of India that elected the world’s second democratically elected communist government in 1957. Kerala is currently governed by the Left Democratic Front led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist). As on July 4, Kerala, a state with a population of 34.8 million people, has reported 5,204 positive cases and 25 deaths. Every death is unfortunate. Yet, Kerala has been relatively successful in constraining the spread of the virus as compared to other states in India and even some of the Western nations. These numbers are especially impressive, as Kerala is one of the most globalized states in India as a tourist destination and because many Keralites work outside the state.1 Of the 5,204 cases, 88 percent of the positive cases are categorized as “Import” — cases identified among people who traveled to Kerala — and only 12 percent of the cases as transmitted through domestic contact.2 This suggests that the state has been successful in putting in place effective protocols to test, trace and isolate affected people. As many experience job losses because of the pandemic, it is expected that more people may return to Kerala, but the government has said that it is prepared.3 What did Kerala do right? The latest Covid-19 dashboard numbers for India show Kerala with 4,400 deaths, while India overall has suffered more than 161,000 deaths from Covid-19. In South America, the largest and richest nation - Brazil, now has more than 310,000 deaths, with smaller neighbors - Peru, Colombia, and Paraguay also have comparatively high death rates - over 4000 in Paraguay, 63,000 Colombia and Peru has 51,000 Covid deaths. And embargoed (including medicine and vaccines) neighbor - Venezuela - 1,555 deaths! May not be bragging time for Venzuelans, but compare populations with infection, hospitalization rates and deaths from Covid-19, and they look stellar by comparison with their ruthlessly capitalistic neighbors that also feature much higher income and wealth inequality levels. https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

The "commies" do a far better job of managing the environment than for-profit capitalists do, everywhere you look! But first, what kind of communism or socialism or liberalism are we talking about here? I consider the Liberals to be an opportunistic political party with no foundation core values, aside from hot air and claptrap about liberal values, democracy etc.. So, what exactly qualifies as commie today? Cause the poorest, most marginalized and persecuted socialist nations are doing a much better job handling environment and are way ahead of rich capitalist-dominated nations when it comes to dealing with and managing pandemics! I believe the main reason why there are so many crackpot rightwing conspiracies regarding Covid-19 and its increasing number of contagious and more lethal variants, is because capitalism and individualist values in general are completely unable to deal with the crisis. So, we end up with every idiot who thinks they have a god-given right to do whatever the fuck they want, when they want, protesting and eventually rioting (if we follow Europe's examples) because there are too many rightwing clowns who've been taught that their own selfish individual desires and wants, should take precedence over the welfare of the community.

They are not very "renewable" if they are over-exploited and poorly managed. And you rightwing knobs need to consider that forest management has to properly take into account the fact that the overall climate is warming along with rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Add in more and more people moving in to rural forested areas where they have greater impact on wildlife...whether they are hunters or not. That's what has happened in much of Ontario. Until 40 or 50 years ago, there weren't enough people living in wilderness areas to have an impact. And from the 80's on, attempts to stop the urban spread are resisted by money -- BIG MONEY. So, if you worship Capitalism, this is your god at work! The net result means a drying out of most forests from longer droughts, and more and more pine beetles moving north as winters become shorter and warmer....eating trees from the inside out. By the time foresters notice a pine beetle infestation, trees are already dead inside and just waiting to fall over....unless a forest fire makes a mad rush through all the dead, dried out timber and a lot of people who thought it would be fun to live in the woods end up running for their lives back to the nearest city!

Idiot! Still too stupid to realize that governments of all levels in a capitalist economy give more credence to the big hogs at the trough who have the most money, and can start a local panic whenever they get mad if rules changes may affect them....including if they have run out tax "incentives" to start a business and local politicos don't want to cough up more tax dollars for them. But, no they don't really give a crap about the actual small business owner who can't offer them much/or present much of a threat if they ignore him!

Many times, I'm looking at product utility (whether I need it or not). And for me, the bullshit really hit the fan in recent years when Apple and other portable computer makers started producing "smart" phones, and within a couple of years, stopped making or even selling the little flip phones that did not access the internet. WHY? The profit returns weren't as good in the early years, but it became clear that (along with large institutions and shopping malls not replacing pay phones) that everyone was going to have to walk around with their portable monitoring device whether they want to or not! What was that again about free choice? Same shit...and even worse from my perspective with the little portable mp3 players like Apple's Ipod Shuffle series. The 4th and last generation of Ipod Shuffle that came out 10 years ago was priced at about $100 and later dropped down to about 50 a few years later. Other players were cheaper, but they were only good for music. Once Apple Corp bought a monopoly control of rss audio tech and put it under their Itunes label, just about every podcaster had to upload to Itunes and those shuffle and other Ipods were the only ones that bookmarked podcasts. For me, this was and still is ALL I wanted or needed from a portable audio player, and I had no intentions of joining the ranks of the idiots with armband phone holders to fiddle with. And even now, I've had to pay blackmarket retailers thru Amazon 3 to 4 times the original price to get the last of the new, unopened Ipod shuffles available. And yet, neither Apple or anyone else licensed to deal their products has been allowed to continue production of these devices, even though I and many others are living proof that there is still a market for them. So much for free enterprise!

I'm waiting for the lockdown of Costco and Walmart! That's when we'll find out exactly who is the "loudmouth factions" today.

I'm referring mostly to consumers of crap like Rebel Media here. But it's not lost on most people who moved out west in the 70's or 80's for even a short time, that the place seems more like a cold Texas than part of Canada. I know we still have some oil flowing. But as it started running out, Alberta was out to encourage as much tarsands expansion as possible; even though we don't need it for Canadian needs, and even back in the 80's, before atmospheric CO2 levels started rising fast and making Global Warming a subject of conversation, it was still understood by the mostly Dene and Cree tribes living north of Athabasca, that they would receive the environmental damages to land and waterways from the at the time - questionable operations of boiling thousands of gallons of water to pump into the shale bitumen layers to drive out as much bitumen slurry as possible. Just like 'fugitive' methane from fracking shale formations to recover natural gas, a lot or most of the gas goes up in the atmosphere or into the groundwater and pollutes drinking supplies. Same thing happens with tarsands fracking. But most of the runoffs go north, rather than south, where large urban populations would raise holy hell if their water was being polluted by toxic chemicals and heavy metals from tarsands runoffs. In the short term, environmental damage is typically offloaded onto the poorest and less dense communities that have less ability to resist "PROGRESS".

NO, and I didn't know anything or really want to know anything about Yugoslavia when I was young, but had no option to completely avoid it either...as our new house in 1970, just happened to be stuck between a Serbian house on one side/and Croatians on the other side of us....something our real estate broker didn't tell my mother or father about. And since it seemed that they were speaking the same language, we thought they were all the same. Relations between our 'neighbors' were civil for the most part and not too outrageous, except on occasion....no doubt when the men of the house were out on their back porches and yards and just decided to argue with each other in Serbo-Croatian about whatever was going on in the old country and who was at fault for something that happened a hundred years ago from what we could gather. According to my mother, things didn't start going off the deep end until that Yugoslav War started in the early 90's. But everyone was getting old by that time, the Serbians had moved away so the other guys had no one to argue with. I guess we had all been watching these amateur comedians arguing and shaking their hands and fists at each other for so long, we thought that's just how crazy Slavic types act, and were surprised when the Civil War broke out and got really ugly with the breakup of Bosnia, and the ethnic cleansing of Croatia's Krajina Region soon after. Yes, I can agree that on the ground, parachuting a bunch of foreign peacekeepers in to conflict zones, whether in Eastern Europe, Africa or the Middle East, is somewhere between pointless and worse. But, my own learning from others on the subject delves in to some questions about outside actors and malevolent intentions. For instance, how was it so much easier to maintain the Slavic union after WWI and right through 1948, when all parties apparently agreed to break with Stalin and the Soviet Union over how independent communist nations could be and act in global affairs. For about another 40 years, until the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Yugoslav Federation was holding together, but was finally undone by rising debt levels to foreign creditors and arguments about who should and should not have to pay the costs. But, a lot of observers after the fall point to the legacy of everyone's favorite pope (especially rightwing non-Catholics) John Paul II, and his role as a lobbyist, being the first to recognize an independent Croatia in 1991, and pushing the US, England and other European nations to do likewise. If JPII had been an actually peacemaker as claimed/ and not a deceitful, devisive old bastard...only concerned with adding another Catholic nation to the books, things may have turned out differently! But, it was easy to see that the NATO alliance had a vested interest in keeping Yugoslavia together in 1948 (even though it was a non-aligned communist nation) but not 40 years later! After the breakup of other nations over the past 30 or 40 years, a cynic on geopolitics might conclude that US intentions are to make foreign nations as small as possible, so that they are poorer in comparison and less able to speak with one voice against international policies they don't agree with. The recent histories of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia will certainly show this trend.

Were we (I mean average consumers...working people) given a choice on this? As I recall, the buy Canadian and corresponding Buy American signs at the Walmarts started disappearing back in the 80's, even before the ink was dry on all this free trade crap! We're dependent on the US because we've been made dependent on them! Our bribe-collecting leaders have all decided that open borders and outsourcing production are supreme virtues and take precedence over promoting local business and production. We used to have a lot more of it in the old days...same as the US and other nations. Now, after more than a year of Covid-19 spreads and variants, that came on us after we were already headed down an economic decline, we've got a giant penis-shaped cargo ship that's wedged in tightly mid-channel in the Suez Canal zone. And now cargo shipping, insurance underwriters, oil tankers and all of the locations in how ever many nations that have been expecting deliveries soon, are being told there's going to be weeks-long delays before products arrive. It was bad enough back in the aftermath of the Israeli invasion of the Sinai, that included mining both ends of the Suez Canal to stop shipments...that left 15 cargo ships stuck in the middle for 7 or 8 years, until all of the issues between Israel and Egypt were resolved enough to re-open the canal and allow shipping again in 1975. BUT, right now! For everyone who's been a detractor of "free trade" and extended supply lines, and Just-In-Time inventory controlling, this is going to be time to sweat for a few months at least! Because nobody knows right now just how far the damage will extend.

Maybe cause I don't give a shit about Facebook, I'd rather know what name is on his birth certificate and gov. records...if that has any bearing.