To some extent, I'm kind of glad the provincial Conservatives in BC are so openly nuts and awful. It's kind of amazing that they so openly say the dumbest stuff, and it's wild that they still win their local ridings, but at least they let everyone see who they are.
Yep. The empire is not one of nation states. It's not the US government on top. The empire is one of money, and the empire owns the nation states. The US government is just the empire's most powerful tool.
No. I don't think it's a good thing to start getting involved in violations of sovereign immunity of overseas assets. There are reasons the EU didn't go through with this, because it's damaging to the international law and financial systems. This is Canada and Japan just making up that the law needs to "evolve," which is basically saying "we known it's not legal but we don't care and we're going to pretend it's just an update to the law because it suits us."
I don't think things like the US stealing Afghanistan's treasury funds was okay either. I don't think the UK stealing Venezuelan funds was okay. I don't think engineering a crash of Iran's currency to cause chaos and suffering in the country to facilitate regime change was okay. I don't think unilateral sanctions being used as tools of warfare is a good thing. And, I don't think Canada should be getting involved in leveraging seized funds belonging to another nation in order to fund war against that nation in violation of sovereign immunity of state funds. All of these are bad precedents. The fact that they're obviously applied selectively makes it worse, because it's not even a new norm. It's just transparent "we support this when it suits us" behaviour.
It makes the world more dangerous. Who is Canada going to turn to when some other country identifies us as being on the wrong side and decides it's okay to seize Canadian assets? It's not like anyone is intimidated by us, so if we've abandoned international law we shouldn't be surprised when that is reciprocated in future disagreements. Maybe some country sees fit to seize assets invested by the Canadian pension fund, or the assets of Canadian companies in their jurisdiction. And, we should certainly expect countries to feel more risk in investing or holding assets in Canada than they did before.
It's opening an international financial Pandora's box, and we're just a middle power with no leverage to exert by ourselves over any of th big countries we need to do business with and which all want leverage over us.
The headline is about some mentions of PMs that amount to nothing while burying this inside?
In one email from September 2017, Austin Hill, co-founder of Blockstream, a Vancouver-based blockchain company, wrote to Epstein asking how his island was after a storm and to “ping me if you’d like to talk crypto or ICO’s.”
As the two exchanged messages, Hill asked Epstein what he thought about “these ICOs & SEC/Hatch Act vs the crazy crypto cowboys?”
“Lots to discuss,” Epstein replied. “(U.S. government) very nervous.”
“Yeah - we are trying to get Justin Trudeau & the provinces to do a regulatory power move up here to create a safe framework,” Hill said. “Take the action the (U.S.) can’t handle & help our markets compete.”
Hill later added: “If we add our immigration policy for entrepreneurs & some AI s--t we have brewing / give us functioning crypto markets … Canada might just end up being America’s hat forever.”
Wtf? That's way more interesting.
This is exactly what I'd say is an example of underestimating the US. Dismissing the importance of capital markets, financial infrastructure, and software tech, while underplaying advantage in intelligence networks and military. Yes, China dominates in manufacturing and trade, and those are important, but it doesn't eliminate the power the US has on other fronts. It's an intense competition, and it's possible that the US empire doesn't come out on top. The issues you raise around manufacturing, REEs, domestic unrest are real, but they are far from settling the competition. The US is still in the lead position by far in terms of global power projection, and they are utterly ruthless. They will burn the world down if needed to rule over the ashes, and they will exploit every advantage they have over allies and adversaries alike.
Personally, I hope to see them lose their grip and to have a more balanced global system emerge, but their power is real and a collapse may be hopeful speculation but is not by any means an odds on bet at this point. It's far from settled.
False dichotomy, and both are bad ideas.
Trade and finance are different flows with overlapping but different stacks. Also, the fact that China is competing doesn't mean the US is defeated. The US is making moves to create new dependencies and rewrite their monetary and financial systems in ways that they're betting will suck more capital into the dollar and push it into wider use again. There's competition now, but the US still has incredible power.
The US should never be underestimated in their capacity to leverage the tools they have to further their dominance. There's chaos in their civic society and the real economy looks rough, but their markets have kept going up. They're making aggressive moves globally to assert their power. They're tearing international and domestic systems apart, but when it comes to capital, they can try to make everywhere else look even riskier than them, and that still pulls money their way.
You've gotta be living in some alternative moral universe to be upset about that but not upset about everything else they've done around it. And, if you recognize everything else they've done around it, this seems like the most tiny and insignificant harm in comparison. But hey, if for people who haven't considered how horrendous everything else they've done is, this opens a door to start being pissed off, maybe it's a good thing.
The advert is literally just Reagan's voice from an address he gave against tariffs along with stock video of people and places. That's it.
Everything about this is tragic. I really hope the majority discourse around this in Canada can handle it with empathy and not get swept up in US-style culture wars about it.