Showing posts with label Geopolitics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Geopolitics. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 20, 2026

The Gaza Peace Plan, Greenland Sovereignty, and the New World Order

 

The Diabolical Way in which the $1b Gaza Peace Board Membership and the Plot for the Achievement of De Facto Sovereignty in Greenland Intersect.

Wednesday, November 5, 2025

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK CARNEY

Do you remember when we could count on the private sector to provide good-paying jobs, paid vacations, generous benefits, and retirement pensions? You don't? Maybe you're not old enough. Maybe that was before you were born. You'd pretty much have to be a baby boomer to remember any of that. 

These days, there are only declining or stagnant wages, gig jobs with no benefits, and people need two or three of them to pay the rent. Homeownership is only possible for those who inherit one, and the cost-of-living crisis continues to worsen. Fortunately, Mark Carney knows what the root of the problem is and how to fix it. Contrary to popular opinion, the solution has nothing to do with improving social safety nets. It turns out that we're not guaranteeing the corporate sector nearly enough of any possible future profits! The price of corporate sector help has gone up considerably!

 

To that end, Mark Carney has decided to cut social spending and to increase corporate welfare. He calculates that Canadians would be better off if we give the Corporatocracy what it wants:     even lower taxes, even fewer regulations, more subsidies, more free infrastructure, fast-tracked approvals and far less red tape. If we do all that, Carney tells us, Corporations will stop using all of the obscene profits they're using to increase CEO and board of directors' salaries and to buy back their own stock for the benefit of their shareholders, and invest some of those profits in the economy for the benefit of all Canadians.

Carney cautions us that that won't happen overnight; it's a generational thing. Maybe some Generation Z, Alpha and Beta members will live long enough to see some of the economic benefits resulting from Carney's investment incentives, provided they survive extreme climate events, of course. In the end, supply chain diversification and significant new investments will reverse declining or stagnating wages and build a stronger, more prosperous  Canada for us all. 

Canadians are inclined to trust Carney on these matters because of his business acumen and his experience as a central banker in both the UK and Canada, not to mention his corporate insider experience with Goldman Sachs and, more recently, Brookfield Asset Management (BAM). He still owns considerable stock in the latter, but they're being held in a blind trust, so there's no conflict of interest here. It's all good. If the value of those stocks goes up because Canada decides to buy thousands of modular homes from BAM, and if the value of BAM's considerable real estate assets in Canada were to rise as a result of his no-tax for homes under $1 million housing policy, Carney wouldn't even know it! Not for sure, anyway. Not until he left politics and took a look at his multi-million dollar portfolio.

There is the risk, though, that the minority Liberal Government doesn't have enough votes to avoid triggering an early election. But Pierre Poilievre doesn't inspire confidence, and Carney has moved so far to the right that Poilievre is having trouble squeezing himself into the small space to the right of Carney. In any case, an early election before a leadership review may not serve the Conservative Party well. It is entirely possible that Carney's Liberals would welcome an early election while Poilievre is still leader of the Conservatives.

The notion that only the private sector can provide a healthy economy has become so entrenched that when it comes to the economy, public money is almost exclusively used to attract and incentivize private investors. Issues such as the housing crisis and unemployment are exclusively addressed using private-public sector partnerships (PPPs), in which the role of the public sector is to incentivize the private sector by granting it concessions. (They're almost as demanding as Trump in that respect.) The private sector -the investors- will always be in the driver's seat. They're not going to invest in something they can't control. This takes publicly-owned housing off the table, and private investors must therefore be cajoled into providing housing. Currently, corporate landlords, BAM included, find renovictions much faster and more profitable than the arduous, time-consuming task of actually building affordable housing in an uncertain market. They need far more than the existing incentives to do that, even when governments are willing to cover any cost overruns. Furthermore,  public housing smacks of socialism or something, so not leaving housing to the private sector is unthinkable. 

Moreover, charities such as food banks allow for sub-subsistence wages and compensate for and mask the affordability crisis. This allows employers to pay sub-subsistence wages, and results in ever-larger segments of the population without a living wage or income, forcing them to rely on charity to get by. In reality, these things are indicative of an unhealthy economy; symptomatic of failure on the part of both the public and private sectors to provide for citizens. Clearly, PPPs alone are not going to resolve these issues. The private sector may not even consider them to be issues.

Nonetheless, Carney's budget assumes that facilitating even more corporate capture will create desperately needed public goods. Citizens may have even less input into national policy, which will prioritize corporate interests over citizen interests, but Carney insists that only a strong Canada will be resilient enough to withstand Trump's tariff wars, and being a free-market corporatist himself, Carney would much rather cede our sovereignty to corporations than to Trump, although he has shown himself willing to do both if necessary. That's what he's doing now. That's how it's always been done. Canada has always been bullied by both the corporatocracy and the US, but it used to be more subtle. It's becoming more overt and more extreme. Continuing to allow them to dictate our environmental and foreign policy has never been more dangerous. 

Tuesday, October 28, 2025

The West's Complicity in the Destruction of Ukraine

 

Me:  

Given the expansionist agendas of both Russia and NATO/the EU, and the red lines set by each, a military solution is the only possible outcome -a solution that would obligate Ukraine to continue to provide the boots on the ground -the cannon fodder- indefinitely. A military resolution could be a long time coming, and given the ambiguity of continued US and European support, it seems likely that Russia will hold out the longest. The implications for Ukraine and Ukrainians are enormous. It seems likely that in the long run they will be abandoned, much like the Kurds have repeatedly been used and abandoned. 

Perplexity AI: 

Your analysis aligns with what many critical observers and policy analysts have concluded regarding the current dynamics of the Ukraine war. Both Russia and NATO/EU have established red lines defining what is negotiable and what is not, creating a proxy standoff where a negotiated, diplomatic settlement is increasingly unlikely—at least under present conditions.wikipedia+2

Military Solution as Default

  • Both Russia and the Western alliance have signaled repeatedly—by word and deepening military commitment—that their ambitions regarding Ukraine’s alignment and territory are non-negotiable red lines. This cements the conflict as an existential, zero-sum struggle for both sides, making compromise extremely difficult to achieve or even propose politically.cidob+1

  • Ukraine’s indispensable role is to provide the “boots on the ground.” Without Ukrainian forces—or their willingness to continue fighting—the West does not appear willing to intervene directly, and Russia can outlast Ukraine militarily if Western support falters.theowp+1

  • There is mounting war fatigue and ambiguity about the reliability of future US support, particularly as geostrategic and domestic priorities shift in Washington and Brussels. Russia’s calculation—borne out in past proxy conflicts and explicitly discussed in recent open sources—is that it has the higher pain threshold and can “hold out” militarily and politically longer than the West can maintain united, robust support for Kyiv.theowp

Strategic Abandonment Risks

  • The historical parallel with the Kurds is apt: externally backed local forces are at risk of eventual abandonment if/when their utility to patrons wanes, strategic calculations shift, or maintaining support becomes too costly domestically for the sponsors.theowp

  • The growing acknowledgment in policy and analytic circles is that the current structure of support is highly contingent and could dry up, leaving Ukraine facing disproportionate costs—social, demographic, and territorial—without security guarantees or a viable path to rapid EU/NATO membership.theowp

Ukrainian Agency and the Human Cost

  • The practical effect is that Ukraine’s fate, agency, and negotiating options are heavily constrained by the competing, sometimes conflicting, ambitions of outside powers. The risk is a prolonged war—or “frozen conflict”—where Ukraine is pressured to fight “to the last soldier,” enduring immense destruction, in the hopes of eventual victory or favorable conditions that may never materialize.theowp

  • For Ukrainians, the implications—population loss, economic devastation, social trauma, and ultimately uncertain sovereignty—are immense. The risk of abandonment or insufficient support grows as war fatigue and ambiguity about Western resolve increase.theowp

In Summary

You are not out of step with prevailing analytic concerns: the structure and stated aims of all major actors, plus the logic of the conflict thus far, make a negotiated solution highly improbable. The burden on Ukraine is immense, and outside powers—while publicly supportive—may not provide the enduring sacrifice that a military resolution would require, especially if political winds shift. Ukraine faces a real risk of the “Kurd scenario”: being used as a strategic pawn and later abandoned as cost, fatigue, and shifting interests intervene.wikipedia+2

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_lines_in_the_Russo-Ukrainian_war
  2. https://www.cidob.org/en/publications/putins-red-line-over-ukraine-new-test-european-and-transatlantic-resolve
  3. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/tomahawk-missiles-are-russias-latest-red-line-will-trump-call-putins-bluff/
  4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3ZNLAmcHaM
  5. https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-24-2025/
  6. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/30/why-are-us-tomahawk-missiles-for-ukraine-a-red-line-for-russia
  7. https://tvpworld.com/89405628/ukraine-war-has-debunked-russias-nuclear-threat-expert
  8. https://theowp.org/kremlin-warns-west-over-dramatic-escalation-moment-in-ukraine-war/
  9. https://www.newsweek.com/zelensky-russia-ukraine-ceasefire-war-update-10943398

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For  a complete history of the development of the above analysis  click here

Locating the war in Ukraine in the geopolitical context of today requires a much deeper dive. It becomes evident that the West is in denial of the fact that it has lost significant geopolitical influence, and both the rhetoric of protecting a western rules-based world order and claims that Russia and China pose military threats to the West are bogus. The West isn't being targeted; it is simply losing relevance in an increasingly multi-polar world. Western leaders are either in denial of this or they are trying to hide it from their constituents to protect their political futures. Acknowledged or not, this new reality is going to be very disruptive to the 15% of the world's population that benefited from the uni-polar, now US-led, rules-based world order that has enriched Western countries for the past 200 years at the expense of the other 85% of the world's population. 

Here are two videos that connect a lot of the dots needed to understand where we were geopolitically, how we got there, where we're headed and why:

 

 

Friday, September 12, 2025

Palestine and Ukraine are unfolding in very different paradigms

Do Western countries respond to Israeli aggression the same way they react to Russian aggression? Was the Russian invasion of Ukraine really unprovoked? Did the Israel-Palestine conflict begin on Oct 7th, 2023? Is NATO partly about expanding and protecting the unipolar, US-led global hegemony? How do NATO members view the roles of Russia, Ukraine, Israel and Palestine in the context of the US-led, unipolar global hegemon? Which presents the greater threat to Europe's relevance on the world stage: the US abandonment of the rules-based global world order, or Russia? Is the US still the only global superpower, or has the world become multipolar?


These are but a few of the questions I’ve been grappling with.

In an effort to understand the conflicting narratives and power dynamics, I went in search of answers. The two conflicts that have been dominating the headlines over the last few years are the conflicts in Palestine and Ukraine. Both conflicts deal with illegal invasions and occupations of another’s territory. Yet the Western media coverage of these two conflicts frames them very differently. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is framed as a clear-cut case of an unprovoked invasion by a powerful aggressor against a sovereign, democratic nation. Israel’s occupation and genocide in Gaza is often described as more nuanced or "balanced," sometimes presenting it as a complex "conflict" between two equal sides rather than a clear case of occupation or aggression, which has drawn criticism from those who argue it downplays Palestinian suffering. Ukraine is part of a crumbling, US-led, unipolar world order. Palestine, on the other hand, has no strategic value to the West whatsoever.

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Just now, in my research, I stumbled on this article entitled Trump and the Unravelling of the Rules-Based International Order, authored by Narendra Pachkhédé / 11 February 2025, published by Open Canada. Read it. It provides a comprehensive, sobering, challenging, and yet hopeful analysis of the disruption and the rapidly evolving power dynamics already well underway. It explains the contradictions in the narratives we are being fed and connects a lot of the dots. It answers most, but not all, of the questions above that I’ve been grappling with. For me, the chief takeaway is that Europe, Canada and the Western world are trying to navigate a rules-based world order that no longer exists.