Quotulatiousness

November 27, 2025

Carney – “Who cares?”

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Economics, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Melanie in Saskatchewan reacts to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s shrugging-off the economic concerns of ordinary Canadians with a casual “Who cares?”

Dear @MarkJCarney

“Who cares?”

That’s what you actually said when asked when you last bothered talking to Trump about the tariffs that are currently body-slamming Canadian jobs.

“Who cares? … It’s a detail.”

Really Mark? Let’s meet some of those “details”, Prime Minister.

The single mom juggling three gig jobs because the factory that used to pay her mortgage “paused investment” and then paused her entire livelihood: she’s just a detail.

The Windsor autoworker whose night shift got cancelled forever while you were busy perfecting your thoughtful squint for the cameras: tiny detail.

The steelworker in Hamilton burning through EI while the mill runs skeleton crews and you call the carnage a “temporary adjustment”: just a little detail.

The small-shop owner deciding which of her three employees to fire this month because 25% tariffs turned her cross-border contracts into suicide notes: who cares, right? Detail.

The rail worker staring at empty tracks where trains full of Canadian auto parts and steel used to roll: super minor detail.

The Saskatchewan electrician watching Nutrien build its next billion-dollar terminal in Washington State instead of BC because at least the Americans aren’t at war with their own economy: I guess that’s barely worth mentioning.

The welders and millwrights being told the next big plants are going up in Ohio and Texas, not Ontario or Alberta, because Canada’s too busy arguing about jurisdiction to actually fight for work: pfft, details.

The family parked on gurneys in an ER hallway at 3 a.m. because we never trained enough doctors and now the ones we have are bolting: honestly, who has time for that detail?

All those kids with degrees doing DoorDash because private-sector job growth is wheezing and every company is frozen waiting for the next Trump tweet or Trudeau shrug: whatever, details.

You flew around the world taking heroic photos, sold us “Team Canada”, bragged you were the adult who could handle Trump, and the second a reporter asks when you last actually picked up the damn phone to fight for Canadian jobs, you smirk and say “Who cares?”

Message received, loud and clear.

Those people I mentioned above? They care.

Every single one of them cares when the shift vanishes, the mortgage renews, the mill goes quiet, the doctor quits, the plant gets built south of the border, and their kids ask why Mom’s crying at the kitchen table again.

But you don’t care.

And the worst part? You didn’t even bother to lie about it.

You lied to every single Canadian to get elected, yet you don’t care.

Well Mark … we sure as hell do care.

And you WILL care.

When your greasy grifting ass is voted to the curb and we undo all the harm you’ve caused Canadians to fatten your coffers. You cant stand living in Canada and can’t wait to move back to the UK … remember?

We sure will.

Just watch us.

Sincerely,
One of the millions of Canadians tired of being your rounding error.

Melanie in Saskatchewan

Also published on her Substack.

Apparently even the most detached of politicians can occasionally be persuaded to acknowledge an unforced error:

Operation Catapult: The Royal Navy’s day of infamy?

Filed under: Africa, Britain, France, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Lindybeige
Published 28 May 2025

Operation Catapult took place on July 3rd 1940 at Mers El Kebir on the Algerian coast. It remains a point of controversy in the relations between the British and the French. Who was to blame for the sinking of the French ships and deaths of French sailors? You be the judge.

Erratum: Acting Rear Admiral Onslow, captain of the aircraft carrier Hermes, was not “Rodney” Onslow as I named him, but Richard Francis John Onslow, M.V.O., D.S.C. (29 March, 1896 – 9 April, 1942).
(more…)

QotD: Honor, homage, and fealty in Game of Thrones

Filed under: Europe, Government, History, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

What the above means is that if, say, Tywin Lannister wants his army, he only gets it if House Falwell, and Ferren and Foote and Clegane choose to come out and fight for him. If Tywin wants to administer the countryside, change a law, count his subjects, impose new taxes – he can only do these things if the houses under him follow through (remember, he has functionally no administrative apparatus of his own – that’s why he outsourced the job). But, Tywin’s options to coerce this cooperation are – because of those castles – extremely limited.

To refer to a distinction introduced in Wayne Lee’s talk [here] – Tywin cannot rely on force (do it because I will kill you if you don’t), he has to use power (do it because you think you ought). Because the apparatus of the state here is very limited, that power is largely generated through personal relationships – you ought to fight for your liege because you have a personal relationship with him. You see him fairly often, you swore loyalty to him (in person!!), he (or his ancestors) have helped resolve your problems in the past and most importantly, because he has kept faith with you in the past.

Which is a way of saying that this system runs on trust and reputation, and that runs both ways. Even as Tywin watches his vassals for signs of disloyalty, his vassals are watching him. Is he true to his word? Can I trust him? Because if the answer is no – I best start hedging my bets. And that bet-hedging is going to come in ways Tywin does not want – I might refuse to come out and fight, or redirect my efforts to fortifying my own holdings, or even switch over to another liege. And in the very early seasons, key characters – most notably Tywin and Tyrion – know this and act accordingly. Tywin talks a good game about lions and sheep, but when it comes down to it, he knows his reputation matters – what the sheep say about the lion matters a great deal, it turns out. Robb Stark’s failure to handle the Karstarks, Tullys and Freys is his eventual undoing. Tyrion berates Cersei on returning to King’s Landing for her actions which might call the Lannister reputation into question (“that bit of theatre will haunt our family for a generation”.)

What is unusual here is how frequently key characters deviate from the norms these societies need to function – Westerosi nobles are stunningly treacherous for people who rely on systems based in trust for survival. In a system which runs on trust and reputation, elites tend to value trust and reputation. They produce literature extolling it (as, indeed, do most “mirrors for princes” – guidebooks on how to be a good ruler – from the Middle Ages do; see, for instance, Book 3 of Dhouda’s Liber Manualis (9th cent.), which goes on and on about trustworthiness) and refine its practice. The sort of eye-popping treachery so common in Game of Thrones was far rarer in the actual historical Middle Ages for exactly the reason Game of Thrones would lead you to believe: it is almost always self-defeating.

The problem here comes in the later seasons and how they re-contextualize all of this concern. That problem has a name, and it is Cersei. Cersei breaks all of these rules. Even early on, she has her soldiers (who recall – are not paid mercenaries, but likely vassals of her house who can very much take their skills elsewhere if they don’t like their current employer) demonstrate her own capricious untrustworthiness on Lord Baelish (she has also, I will note, mistaken violence for power). She humiliates Barriston Selmy in court, a spectacle her own future vassals might have remembered. She incinerated her own family – by blood and marriage – along with her erstwhile allies. Cersei is endlessly treacherous, often foolishly and obviously so, and yet …

And yet it doesn’t matter. The Lannister bannermen in the penultimate episode mount the walls to fight a doomed battle for her anyway. Not only is that behavior inexplicable, it hardly seems possible. Who, after all, is raising and leading these men? Who is coordinating supplies and grain shipments to the capital? Remember, the reason for this distributed system of political leadership is that the central state does not have the administrative apparatus to raise armies or feed cities on its own – it has to outsource that to vassals. Vassals that Cersei has murdered or alienated, almost to a man. Cersei is defeated because dragons are unstoppable monsters, but she should have been defeated because she would have simply been incapable of raising an army at all.

Bret Devereaux, “New Acquisitions: How It Wasn’t: Game of Thrones and the Middle Ages, Part III”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2019-06-12.

November 26, 2025

The Korean War Week 75: Insurgency Behind The Lines! – November 25, 1951

Filed under: China, History, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:01

The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 25 Nov 2025

While there is no battle action this week, there is still a lot of fighting, as the UN forces must constantly watch their backs against the thousands of guerrillas in the hills of South Korea. At the truce talks, the Communist side accepts the UN proposal for a demarcation line — Item 2 on the agenda — but for it to be valid the other three items remaining on the agenda must be dealt with within 30 days, which seems very optimistic to most. There is also the question of post-armistice inspections teams; are they a good idea? Or will they simply provide the other side with much-needed actionable intelligence?

Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:45 Recap
01:08 Guerilla Actions
03:19 Hanley’s Numbers
05:37 The Demarcation Line
08:04 Inspection Teams
10:36 Ridgway’s Opinion
12:06 The Agenda
12:48 Summary
13:04 Conclusion
13:57 Call to Action
(more…)

The RCAF needs either F-35s or Gripens … not both

Filed under: Cancon, Europe, Government, Military, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Although the Trump provocations are a unique situation for the Royal Canadian Air Force to find itself dealing with, the long-delayed decision on what the replacement for our current CF-18 fleet can’t be realistically put off for much longer. The government has committed to paying for the first 16 aircraft of an 88-plane order, but many pundits are crying out for the government to cancel the remaining portion of the order and instead purchase different aircraft … the leading contender being the Swedish Gripen. This might be the worst of all worlds for the RCAF, in needing to support two different airframes with zero parts compatibility. This two-fleet “solution” would make life much more difficult for RCAF training and logistics, but it’d be a performative eLbOwS uP to Trump, so there’s a strong chance it’ll happen despite military and economic reality. Bryan Moir makes the argument for the Gripen on his Substack:

Mark Carney loves the big phrases. “Build Canada strong.” “Rewire the economy.” “Generational investments.”

It’s good branding. But slogans don’t build nations — decisions do. And right now, one decision matters more than the rest:

Will Canada assemble the Saab Gripen fighter on Canadian soil — or will we lock ourselves into permanent military dependence through the F-35?

Let’s start with the truth no one in Ottawa wants to say out loud.

The F-35 is a 56% aircraft in a 100% environment.

The F-35 fleet’s mission-capable rate sits at 55–56%. That means a country buying 16 aircraft can expect maybe eight airborne on a good day. Eight jets to defend the Northwest Passage, the Arctic archipelago, and a coastline longer than Russia’s.

This isn’t speculation; it’s physics, logistics, and accounting.

Meanwhile, the United States fields 54 F-35s at Eielson AFB in Alaska — backed by billions in supporting infrastructure: software hubs, spares depots, rapid part cycling, and multiple layers of maintenance and training.

They can sustain the F-35 in the Arctic.

Canada cannot.

And pretending that we can — or worse, pretending that it doesn’t matter — is not national defence. It’s denial.

Gripen was designed for the world Canada actually lives in.

Gripen’s core design features are the ones Canada pretends the F-35 also has:

  • Cold-weather resilience
  • Short runway and road-base operations
  • Minimal crew requirements
  • Quick turnarounds
  • Low maintenance footprint
  • Sovereign sustainment

Gripen isn’t just compatible with Canada.

It was built for countries whose geography forces them to be independent.

The importance of “a bicycle shop in Bermuda” to Mark Carney’s financial affairs

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

It’s no secret that Prime Minister Mark Carney is a rich man. When he entered politics, he put his financial holdings into a blind trust to satisfy the federal government’s ethical and conflict of interest rules. But through this arrangement, he still owns significant positions in companies whose fortunes can (and are) affected by the actions of his government. On Monday, this was discussed at some length by a Parliamentary committee in Ottawa, as reported on his Substack by Dan Knight:

On November 24, in a basement room of West Block, MPs spent two hours asking a very simple question that everyone in Ottawa is suddenly pretending is complicated:

If Mark Carney gets richer when Brookfield does better, and Brookfield is running big climate and infrastructure funds out of what one MP described as a bicycle shop in Bermuda, how on earth is that not a problem for the Prime Minister of Canada?

The man in the hot seat was Justin Beber, Chief Operating Officer of Brookfield Corporation. His job was to calm everyone down. Instead, under oath, he calmly confirmed just about everything the government would rather you didn’t think about too hard.

He started with the corporate biography. Brookfield, he reminded the committee, is a massive global investor headquartered in Toronto. It has more than 600 direct employees in Canada, more than 15,000 workers in its operating businesses, and it paid over $750 million in federal tax last year, not counting provincial and local taxes. All of that is true. None of it changes the basic conflict: the sitting Prime Minister still has long-term compensation that rises when Brookfield, and certain Brookfield funds, succeed.

Conservative MP Michael Barrett went straight there. He asked Beber whether, when Brookfield’s value increases, the value of stock options and deferred share units also increases. Beber said yes. Then Barrett asked whether that changes if those options and units are placed in a blind trust. Beber said no. It does not. The economic reality is exactly the same: if Brookfield’s share price goes up, those instruments are worth more, whether they are in Mark Carney’s brokerage account or parked with a trustee behind frosted glass.

[…]

Cooper spelled out why it matters. Carney, he said, knows what kind of public policy could improve the success of the fund. The fund’s success determines his future bonus pay. Without knowing who the investors are or all of the fund’s positions, Canadians have no way to see where those incentives may line up — or collide — with the national interest. These are not theoretical conflicts. They are simply invisible ones.

Eventually, after some confusion over terminology, Beber did confirm that Transition Fund I has invested in 20 companies and that their names are listed in the ethics annex. Only one of those firms, Entropy, is in Canada. The rest of the portfolio, and the roster of big-money investors behind it, sits offshore, beyond any serious public scrutiny, while the Prime Minister’s upside rides on how well those bets pay off.

The tax side of the story is just as revealing. Bloc MP Luc Thériault put it bluntly: tax avoidance is not a conspiracy theory, it is a business model so widespread that the OECD and G20 built an entire 15 percent global minimum tax regime to deal with it. He cited Canada Revenue Agency estimates of tens of billions of dollars in lost federal revenue each year, including billions attributable specifically to tax avoidance. He asked Beber whether Brookfield engages in tax avoidance. Beber refused to use the term. “We practice tax planning”, he said, like “any other company”. He repeated that Brookfield pays all taxes that are “due and payable” in the jurisdictions where it operates.

That phrase sounds reassuring until you remember who writes the rules that decide what is “due and payable”, and who benefits when the system can be routed through Bermuda via something that, on paper, looks like a bicycle shop.

[…]

At some point, the pattern becomes impossible to ignore. The Prime Minister of Canada left a giant global investor with standard executive incentives, kept his vested long-term instruments, retained a carried interest in a $15 billion Bermuda-run climate fund that will operate into the 2030s, and knows exactly which sectors that firm is betting on. His government is now pouring public money and regulatory support into many of those same sectors. The firm uses structures justified as “tax transparent” that just happen to run through low-tax jurisdictions, including one address a Conservative MP described as a bicycle shop in Bermuda. The man running the firm’s operations will not say the Prime Minister’s potential upside is small. He will not say the global minimum tax is being met in practice. He will not disclose who the fund’s other investors are.

You do not need to be an expert in securities law to see the conflict. You do not need to be an expert in global taxation to see why a bicycle-shop registration in Bermuda is not about cycling. You just need to watch what they are desperate not to talk about directly: the hard link between public power in Ottawa and private profit offshore, wrapped in legal jargon, buried in annexes, and shielded from sunlight by a blind trust and a lot of very careful answers.

A Tray in a Day | Paul Sellers

Filed under: Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Paul Sellers
Published 11 Jul 2025

Not every project needs to be complicated, and many can be a machineless exercise that develops hand skills and simplifies the project all the more.

People often shun plywood as a legitimate option over solid wood, but where solid wood might otherwise expand, contrary to the grain in solid wood oriented at 90º, plywood will be a perfect choice because of its stability, strength, and longevity.

I say a tray-in-a-day, but six in a day is highly possible, especially when you use only hand tools and no power equipment. Enjoy!
——————–
(more…)

QotD: Racism and social justice

Filed under: Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

A definitive proof of the evil of social “science” is that — faced with the real problem of racism — it has come up with the insane idea of racist post mortem justice; demanding that living white people compensate living black people for what some dead white people did to some dead black people. If you question the logic of this then — boom — you confirm the whole crooked theory because it’s your “privilege” that blinds you to its truth. It’s like the ducking stool as a test for witchcraft. Guilty or not, you’re done for. Oh and by the way, you can’t just ignore this piffle and quietly get on with your harmless life because “white silence is violence”.

This very American problem is poisoning the world through the dominance of US popular culture and the influence of the wealthy US universities. On this side of the Pond we have our own problems. We really don’t need a whole raft of America’s too. But white privilege is such a wonderful tool for creating and exploiting division that our leftists can’t leave it be. It’s a social A-bomb just lying there waiting to be detonated.

The Left is an immoral political movement. It seeks to divide. It seeks to promote hatred between classes and other groupings in society in order to create problems that can only be “solved” by employing legions of leftists with no otherwise marketable skills to direct us to the “correct” path. The extent to which it’s already achieved its real, unstated aim of creating a well-paid cadre of apparatchiks is visible in the present pandemic. The only jobs that are safe are of those employed by the state and rewarded by reference to almost anything other than economic contribution. Those thus paid for are “essential workers.” Those who pay for them are not. Anyone who points this scam out is monstered by a leisured army of social “scientists” and their graduates in the media — also paid for by us “inessential” saps.

Judge them by the outcomes of their policies and governance and the theorists and politicians of the Left are clear failures. The squalor in which poor black Americans live is almost invariably presided over by them just as a Labour council in Britain is a promise of continued poverty for all but its apparatchiks. If the poor are your voters, the more poverty the better. If the oppressed are your voters, the more (real or imagined) oppression the merrier.

The perfect symbol of Leftist politicians in this respect is the character of Senator Clay Davis in The Wire — perhaps the greatest TV show ever made and (among many other marvellous things) a searing indictment of American racial politics. It’s a show that couldn’t be made today because it reeks of white privilege. By the way, the fact that this concept would have prevented The Wire being made is by itself a small proof that it’s a wicked one.

Tom Paine, “Checking my privilege”, The Last Ditch, 2020-06-02.

November 25, 2025

“So what?”

Filed under: Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Spaceman Spiff makes the case for the two simple words in the title being the most powerful words in the English language:

The two most powerful words in the English language are, so what? We do not use them enough.

A “so what?” is a rebuff, a rejection of some cherished belief. It confronts the promoter of an idea with the worst form of disagreement, indifference.

In a narcissistic world where attention is often the goal of agitators, genuine disinterest is difficult to manipulate. It disarms anyone intent on destroying established norms.

A “so what?” forces a reconsideration. It has the strongest effect on the issues we care most about.

Nobody enjoys their precious cause being dismissed. That is why we must use it more.

Who cares?

Many of today’s moral crusades are imposed on us against our will. We are told we must attend to issues most of the world ignores.

Here are a few to consider.

Racism and diversity

Accusations of racism are now endemic in Western nations. The underlying drive is one of punishment. Natural wariness of alien peoples is recast as a moral failing, the antidote to which is enforced mixing to demonstrate the backwardness of one’s social inferiors. A policy unique to Western countries.

The promotion of diversity quotas rests upon tacit acceptance of the idea that homogeneity is undesirable. This requires our participation to succeed, especially the consequence of this belief, that the mass importation of foreigners is needed to improve society.

The response to accusations of a lack of diversity should be, so what? It needs to be laughed at. Who cares if we are too homogenous? Says who?

No rational group seeks to dilute their numbers. This is a perverse affectation confined to a handful of ethnomasochists who think racism is unique to Western societies.

A robust rejection of this helps recalibrate to the global norm, a useful reminder to anyone steeped in woke catechisms. Much of the world views out-group preference as either treason or mental illness, a perspective easily observed simply by travelling.

Sexism and gender equality

There is a mismatch between the sexes. Men win the prizes, dominate their fields and invent the inventions.

We are told this is a disgrace. Such patriarchal domination will not do.

A key flashpoint is the “gender wage gap” that unwittingly illustrates the insincerity of feminism. There is no wage gap. There is a lifetime earnings gap. This is a consequence of decisions women voluntarily make such as spending more time with family or choosing less risky employment closer to home.

This is firmly established and supported with unimpeachable data, often produced by the very governments pursuing gender pay gap legislation.

Polite counterarguments against feminist talking points like this fail despite their thoroughness because facts are dismissed as they are inconvenient to a lucrative narrative.

Therefore the response to accusations of gender imbalances should be met with a robust so what? If they don’t care about engaging with established facts why should we care about the issue at all? Energetic indifference is the only way to deprive feminism of its momentum.

Much of the “argument” for gender equality is emotional manipulation. It abuses men’s protective instincts in a shameless way.

A firm “so what?” arrests this natural urge in men. It provides a small space for us to escape manipulation and examine the facts.

Who cares if women are underrepresented or have less money? This is a result of decisions women themselves make, so solve the problem yourself. Stop begging men for special favours.

Update, 26 November: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.

Canada’s “post-national” project was foisted on us by the elites, not ordinary Canadians

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Fortissax responds to a recent article published in the National Post, where Geoff Russ describes Liberal nationalism as “a cringey failure” and calls for young members of the “new right” to work toward a new idea of Canada:

Geoff Russ’ specific claim that “millions of old stock Canadians cheered for it” is wrong. He takes a decades-long elite project, driven over the heads of the public, and pins it on the very people it was done to.

There was never a clear democratic moment when ethnic Canadians calmly voted to abolish old Canada and embrace a postnational, multicultural order. What happened was a long campaign run from the top.

After 1945, cabinet ministers, mandarins and policy people rebuilt Canadian identity around liberal internationalism and continental integration. The older understanding of Canada as a British and French country with its own civilisation was treated as something shameful to be buried. Schools, television, churches, courts, universities and the federal bureaucracy repeated the same script: “progress” meant loosening ties to the founding peoples and aligning with UN norms and North American liberal opinion.

This was not some anonymous drift. C.D. Howe and the postwar planners normalised a centralised, technocratic state tied to American capital. Mackenzie King and Louis St Laurent locked in continental and institutional commitments that weakened any independent British and French national idea. Jack Pickersgill used immigration as a tool of social engineering and admitted that public opinion was hostile, so policy had to move quietly from above.

Lester Pearson chaired the Biculturalism Commission while preparing the shift from “two founding races” to a vague multicultural formula, and his government set up the flag change that deliberately severed visual continuity with the old country.

Pierre Trudeau went further, announcing in 1971 that Canada would have no official culture and that no ethnic group would take precedence, which was a polite way of saying the historic British and French peoples would be stripped of formal primacy in their own state.

The public did not demand this. It had to be dragged and managed. Gallup and other polling in the postwar decades consistently showed majorities hostile to high immigration levels. The 1974 Green Paper and the extensive public hearings that followed produced sharp criticism of mass intake and of the cultural and economic disruption it would bring.

Ottawa thanked everyone for their input and then moved ahead with the 1976 Immigration Act, which entrenched a liberal, permanent immigration framework anyway. When Canadians were finally asked, they said no. Their answer was ignored.

At the same time, ordinary people lost any real leverage over core questions. Immigration policy was transformed without a referendum. Official multiculturalism was declared from above. The Charter and rights culture shifted effective authority from Parliament and local communities into the hands of courts and legal elites.

The flag changed, and symbols and curricula that reflected old Canada were rewritten or stripped away. Any attempt to defend the historic nation was smeared as crankish or hateful. To take this history and summarise it as “millions of old stock Canadians cheered for it” is like blaming a tenant for “choosing” demolition because he did not throw himself under the bulldozer.

The message is that old stock Canadians must now live with this order forever; that their own elites may have driven the revolution, but the public did not resist hard enough, so dispossession is deserved; and that any attempt by the founding peoples to assert a legitimate claim to continuity in their own country is some kind of moral offence.

You might as well watch Guru Nanak Jahaz, since you’ve already paid for it

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History, India, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The Canadian government loves handing out money — they hand out a lot of money — so it shouldn’t be surprising to find out that Canadian taxpayers funded the creation of a movie about a Sikh terrorist who assassinated a Canadian official … or that the assassin is the hero of the movie. After all, isn’t that the heart and soul of multiculturalism? Celebrating other cultures and traditions as being superior to those of ordinary Canadians? The feds seem to believe it.

If you can find a way to watch the recently released Khalistani propaganda film Guru Nanak Jahaz, you might as well watch it. You paid for it, after all.

The film, which depicts the assassination of a Canadian civil servant by a Sikh terrorist as a heroic act of justice, has a “Funded by the Government of Canada” credit at the end. It was also supported by the B.C. government and gives special thanks to Conservative MP Tim Uppal and Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal. While the Liberals didn’t return a request for comment, a spokesperson for Uppal told me that he was not involved in the film and that the filmmakers did not communicate with him about the credit at any point.

Set in 1914, the plot follows the assassin, who you likely never heard about, and the voyage of the more familiar Komagata Maru, a ship which carried nearly 400 Indian passengers from Hong Kong to Vancouver, only to be denied entry to Canada. It was screened in some Cineplex theatres earlier this year.

The official narrative that you’ll find on government websites explains that this was purely a matter of baseless Canadian racism, and it’s been wholeheartedly adopted by politicians today: as prime minister, Justin Trudeau apologized for the incident in 2016, and the Conservative party releases annual statements commemorating the event, praising the bravery of the passengers and their craving for freedom.

That’s the whitewashed version, however. It leaves out that the Komagata Maru voyage was organized by the Indian Ghadar movement — the word literally means “revolution” — which advocated for violent resistance against the British Empire. (India was a British possession at that time and would continue to be until 1947). Its members were primarily Sikhs who lived in North America. And while they did experience racism, and while changes to Canada’s immigration laws in 1908 indirectly restricted Indian immigration, there were also reasons for the Canadian government to be apprehensive.

Ghadar members dreamed of a return to India, but wanted to rid that land of the British first. They remembered the Indian Mutiny of 1857 with regret — that bloody event saw many British-Indian regiments unsuccessfully take up arms against the Empire; Sikh Punjabis were among the exceptions, largely siding with the British. Decades later, the mostly Sikh Punjabi Ghadarites proposed another 1857-like uprising while applauding anti-British terrorism.

When rumblings of war with Germany began to brew in 1914, the Ghadarites grew excited — now was the time to strike. In August 1914, after the war broke out, the movement’s newspaper advocated, “Go to India and incite the native troops. Preach mutiny openly. Take arms from the troops of the native states and wherever you see the British, kill them. … There is hope that Germany will help you.” Expats in the Orient organized ships to return home and revolt.

The Komagata Maru was part of this movement. Organized by Ghadarites before the breakout of the First World War, it attempted to bring more movement adherents into Vancouver to settle. Canada was right not to let it dock because the entire envoy was a security threat.

The S.S. Komagata Maru was at the centre of an attempt to bring 400 Sikh revolutionaries into Canada to agitate for the destruction of British rule in India in 1914.

Roller Delay in France: The H&K 33F (Trials & Export Models)

Filed under: France, Germany, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 14 Jul 2025

When France was looking to replace the MAS 49/56 rifle for military service in the 1970s, it tested all of the major rifle options available. These included the Colt M16, FN CAL, and HK33. The HK required some modification to meet French military requirements, specifically the capability to launch rifle grenades. The model 33F was developed specifically to meet these requirements — first as a modified standard HK33, and later as a factory production run. The modifications made include a reinforced magazine well, 4-position fire control gourd (including 3-round burst), a reinforced stock attachment, grenade range rings on the barrel, and a mounting bracket for a rifle grenade sight.

Apparently the HK33F performed very well in trials, but it was ultimately deemed politically unacceptable to adopt a German rifle for the French Army (a policy which has changed now, 50 years later …). Instead, the domestic FAMAS was chosen, along with the SIG-Manurhin 540 purchased in limited numbers for the Foreign Legion.

A second type of 33F came about from the program, however. Berlin police wanted HK33 rifles, but treaty prohibited West German arms from entering Berlin in East Germany. The loophole found was to send the parts to MAS in France, where they were assembled and marked HK33F, thus making them French origin gun which could be sent to Berlin. These rifles had none of the French grenade launching adaptations, and were completely standard HK33s except for the use of heavy barrels. MAS eventually added the G3, HK33, and MP5 to its export catalog in the late 1970s and sold quantities to a number of small countries in the French sphere of influence (including Haiti, Burkina Faso, Lebanon, and others).

Many thanks to the IRCGN (Institut de Recherche Criminelle de la Gendarmerie Nationale) for allowing me access to film these rather rare HK variants for you!
(more…)

QotD: British Socialism in the 1930s

Filed under: Britain, History, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents. The first thing that must strike any outside observer is that Socialism, in its developed form, is a theory confined entirely to the middle classes. The typical Socialist is not, as tremulous old ladies imagine, a ferocious-looking working man with greasy overalls and a raucous voice. He is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years time will quite probably have made a wealthy marriage and been converted to Roman Catholicism; or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him, and, above all, with a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting. This last type is surprisingly common in Socialist parties of every shade; it has perhaps been taken over en bloc from. the old Liberal Party. In addition to this there is the horrible — the really disquieting — prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words “Socialism” and “Communism” draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, “Nature Cure” quack, pacifist, and feminist in England … To this you have got to add the ugly fact that most middle-class Socialists, while theoretically pining for a class-less society, cling like glue to their miserable fragments of social prestige.

George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)

November 24, 2025

Fairy tales for Canadian boomers – “we have the best healthcare system in the world”

Filed under: Books, Cancon, Government, Health, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Older Canadians, especially the Baby Boom generation, have a huge blind spot when it comes to any discussion about healthcare … because they believe what they were told as children about Canada’s healthcare system being the “envy of the world” and other such comforting notions. (It’s not just Canada, as British belief in the quality of their National Health Service is very much at odds with the evidence.) This rose-coloured nostalgic faith makes it very difficult to address some of the very real problems that beset Canada’s hospitals and doctors. The media are understandably reluctant to publish anything that goes against this, as Peter Menzies explains:

Grok image from The Rewrite

About the same time as William Watson’s outstanding book Globalization and the Meaning of Canadian Life was being published in the late 1990s, the newspaper I worked for was sending a journalist to Europe to research a series of articles on how health care systems work in some of those countries.

I mention Bill’s book, which was runner-up for a public policy Donner Prize, because it exquisitely details many of the things Canadians believe about themselves that simply aren’t true. Which was the same reason why the Calgary Herald sent its health reporter (yes, there used to be such a thing), Robert Walker, to Europe — to expose its readers to the fact that there are more than two health care systems: our “defining” one and America’s, both of which are extremes. To the best of my knowledge, that remains the only time a Canadian news organization has taken on that task.

In every country examined in Walker’s reports, as is the case with almost every country in the world, public and private health care and insurance systems maintained a peaceful coexistence and the public’s needs were being met. Almost 30 years later, that remains the case. Also almost 30 years later, neither Bill’s book nor the Herald‘s reporting has had the slightest impact on the prevailing media narrative in Canada. It remains determined to perpetuate the fear that any move to increase the role of private health providers or even allow doctors to work in both systems (as was proposed this week by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith) is the first step on the slippery slope to “American-style” health care. This line has been successfully used for decades — often hyperbolically and occasionally hysterically — by public monopoly advocates for Canada’s increasingly expensive and difficult to access systems. We have known for 40 years that once Baby Boomers like your faithful servant turned bald and grey that the system would be unsustainable. But that single, terrifying “American-style” slur has halted reform at every turn.

The Tyee responded with a “Danielle Smith’s secret plan to Destroy Public Health Care” column while the Globe and Mail‘s Gary Mason, a Boomer, challenged my thesis here by suggesting it was time for open minds because “the reality is, the health care system in Canada is a mess”.

It is. And at least some of the blame — a lot, in my view — belongs at the door of Canadian news organizations that for decades have failed to fully inform readers by making them aware that there are a great many alternatives to just “ours” and “US-style”.

I was reminded of this in a recent Postmedia story concerning the perils of private health care provision. Referencing a study on MRIs, the story, right on cue, quotes the part of a study that states “It’s a quiet but rapid march toward U.S.-style health care”.

One would not want to suggest that those clinging to that parochial view should be denied a platform. But at the same time, readers have every right to demand that journalists push back and ask advocates for state monopolies simple questions such as “Why do you say that? Could it not be the first step towards UK-, German-, Dutch-, French-, Portugese- or Swedish-style health care?” and open the debate.

Algeria: France’s War It Refused to Name – W2W 054

Filed under: Africa, France, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 23 Nov 2025

This episode tracks how the doctrine “Algeria is France” — departments, settler power, and forced assimilation — breeds dispossession, mass violence, and a new Algerian nationalism: from conquest and the Sétif massacres to the FLN’s launch in 1954 and Philippeville in 1955. As Paris doubles its forces and passes Special Powers, Suez intertwines with the war, bombings in Algiers begin, and Lacoste hands police powers to General Massu — opening the Battle of Algiers and a system of torture.
(more…)

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress