Quotulatiousness

January 13, 2025

Muttering something about “manifest destiny” while glancing north

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

The Line‘s weekly dispatch is, as usual, mostly behind the paywall but the portion visible to cheapskates contains much of interest:

Manifest Destiny, 2025? Big Serge’s updated map for the old US War Plan Red for a military invasion of Canada.

It’s no coincidence that as Canada’s leadership devolved into its own navel, the very-soon-to-be-inaugurated Donald Trump escalated his provocations. This week, Trump threatened to use “economic force” to push Canada to bend the knee. Meanwhile, we cannot help but notice that the idea of a Canadian state is starting to gain significant traction in even moderate and mainstream American conservative circles. Meanwhile, we’ve got Alberta Premier Danielle Smith supping with Kevin O’Leary and Jordan Peterson down in Mar-a-Lago.

Tap tap. May we suggest that you peruse the safety cards tucked into the back of your seat, buckle up, and take note of your nearest emergency exits?

Whether we are talking about some kind of economic union, or a full-blown annexation, the fact that at least some in America are reviving the term “Manifest Destiny” is a possibility that we can no longer afford to dismiss as mere trolling. While we hope that the Trump administration is going to be so bogged down with other policy priorities that “Canada 51” is soon overshadowed, your Line editors have been game theorying out a host of possible scenarios and … none of them look great. If Trump et al get serious about this idea — and, again, we have no way to know if they will get serious about this idea — then we at The Line fear that Canada is in for some serious turmoil in the coming few months.

As I said in an email to Severian the other week, “… Canada will have very little ability to react to whatever Hitler, er, I mean “Trump” will do as soon as he’s inaugurated. It was clear before this that Trudeau cared very little about ordinary Canadians’ lives, but this really is dereliction of duty on a cosmic scale. If Trump does follow through with that huge tariff, the Canadian economy is likely to collapse, as we’re so deeply intertwined with the US on so many levels. Sadly, this might make it even more attractive to Trump, as it would absolutely encourager les autres on a global scale. If the BOM is willing to destroy the economy of his closest trading partner, what might he do to France? Or Germany? Or South Korea?” Back to the dispatch:

To explain our alarm, let’s first look at another news item to cross the desk. This week, Justin Trudeau travelled south to attend the funeral of Jimmy Carter, and stopped at the CNN studios for a quick interview with Jake Tapper on the way through.

On the whole, we think his interview was fine. Look, Trudeau’s been through a lot in the last few days, and considering the circumstances, it’s not reasonable to expect a breakthrough performance. So we’re being a bit unkind to nitpick, but something he said during that interview deserves scrutiny.

Justin Trudeau got far too comfortable with being treated as a progressive superstar, not only among the sycophants with CBC nametags but even on the international stage … perhaps especially on the international stage. Trudeau was always inclined to the performative in everything he did, and he might well only feel fully alive when cameras are rolling. The evidence certainly seems to point in that direction.

The “most prolific Canadian actor” meme was mildly amusing during Trudeau’s first term in office, as he went out of his way to put on elaborate costumes and to perform for the audience. This sort of thing was understandable if not particularly welcome to those who wanted Canada to be taken seriously by our allies and trading partners. It was clichéd to joke about what novelty socks Trudeau was wearing at any given international event … because it was his trademark. As was the clearly diminished respect he got as his time in office went on.

When asked about Trump’s provocations, Trudeau affirmed Canadians’ pride in their own sovereignty by noting — half jokingly, we presume — that we fundamentally define ourselves as “not American”.

Firstly, this is not a particularly diplomatic jibe to be launched at actual ordinary Americans; it made us wince to consider how it must have landed to CNN’s ordinary watching audience.

Secondly, if the only way in which Canadians can define themselves nowadays is “not-American”, Jeez, that’s an extraordinarily thin peg upon which to hang a hat.

This stuff matters.

It is to wince. However, even that pathetic response was better than launching into yet another diatribe about Trudeau’s firm conviction that Canadians are all genocidal white supremacist morons, I guess.

The ability of a population to withstand neighbourly aggression — “economic force”, if you will — depends on two things. The first is internal social cohesion and identity. The second is what the aggressor is willing to do or offer in order to secure capitulation.

In this case, the second part of that equation is outside our control. So we look to the first: does Canada have a strong sense of self right now? Do its leaders command the moral authority necessary to create the social cohesion required to withstand a period of sustained material sacrifice?

If we are “not Americans”, it rather asks the question why aren’t we Americans? And, more crucially, what are we actually willing to give up in order to preserve that independence?

A people can be rallied to make extraordinary sacrifices for a greater ideal, including the ideal of independent nationhood. Look at the sacrifices of blood and treasure made every day in Ukraine, for example.

If necessary, Canadians can band together and survive on lentils and supply managed dairy and eggs for many months or years. We can pull together through a period of inconceivable material hardship — but only if we’re doing it for something. Canadians, as per usual, can talk a big game, but how many of us are willing to suffer a real collapse of our quality of life to preserve a quasi-ironic, tautological, or negative self-identity?

Before Trudeau’s time in office, I wouldn’t have thought to question Canadians’ pride in their country and willingness to defend it. Nearly ten years later, Trudeau and his minions have done a fantastic job of undermining any kind of patriotic enthusiasms in our “post-national state”, haven’t they?

We at The Line don’t believe there is even a vanishingly small chance of the Americans using martial force to secure Canada — and if they choose to amass a brigade at the border on Monday morning, we’re all taking the Pledge of Allegiance by noon, so let’s not grace this fantasy with a lot of real consideration.

I’d love to refute that, but it’s probably true, at least in the more densely populated areas of southern Canada … the US could send a brigade north to Vancouver, another to Calgary, another to Winnipeg, and one to Montreal. Thanks to the lower lakes, it’d take a bit more to secure Toronto and Ottawa but not a lot more. We literally couldn’t stop them, both because our very limited troops are not positioned to stop an invasion from the south and because they’re not even close to being in a ready-to-move condition. Even our local reserves would have to be notified, travel to their local armouries, be issued weapons and the very limited amount of ammunition kept in local storage and by the time they were ready, there’s a foreign flag waving over Queen’s Park and Parliament hill.

Big Serge’s map at the top of this post vastly overstates the number of US troops necessary to secure the major population areas.

However, it is worthwhile to imagine it as a pure thought experiment: what would you really be willing to give up in order to continue to be “not-American”.

Your investment savings? Your property? Your house? Would you sacrifice the life of your child, or your grandchild, to preserve the legal independence of Canada?

We ask this question not because we think it’s going to come to that, but rather because these questions test the integrity of our national concept. They allow us to examine our resilience, and our willingness to withstand an assault of an economic or moral nature. And, folks, we’re just not convinced that our national resilience is very high at the moment.

Well, I’m sure a lot of new Canadians would want the rest of us to defend the place while they take advantage of all the government and corporate positions that need to be “diversified” … surely us evil white supremacists are willing to lay it all on the line for a more diverse society, right?

It was interesting to us to note, this week, that the most powerful moral appeal for the concept of nationhood was proposed in a Globe and Mail oped by Jean Chrétien. While we salute the old patriot, we can’t help but point out that he’s, well, very old — 91, to be precise.

We at The Line have a sneaking suspicion that Canadian patriotism and, more importantly, a willingness to make serious sacrifices to preserve that patriotism, is going to decline precipitously by age cohort in any well-constructed survey of the topic.

Would the young fight to preserve Canada against the Russians or the Chinese? Yes, we think our fellow Canadians could absolutely be called upon to make serious sacrifices to circumvent the rule of autocrats and dictators. But to prevent being subsumed by the — checks notes — wealthiest and most powerful democratic nation on earth (presuming America stays that way)? A nation that shares almost all of our essential values; one that looks and sounds just like us, and would probably provide a better set of opportunities to our kids? The place an increasing number of us are going to do start business and receive timely medical care?

Why?

Why would we do that? Can someone — anyone — please articulate a vision, here? Is anyone in our leadership class even trying?

It’s been noted many times that people are willing to charge even bare-handed into machine guns and cannons for things like “Liberté, égalité, fraternité“, but nobody is going to man the ramparts for “peace and good government”.

We put a lot of the blame for this on Justin Trudeau, and on the identitarian politics that consciously sought to undermine national legitimacy in the pursuit of progressive ends. But, if we’re being honest, we think this complacency of identity predates these social movements by many decades.

The Liberal Party as an institution owns a lot of it for the ways in which the “Natural Governing Party” has tied national identity to its preferred partisan policy options, at the direct expense of more transcendental and bi-partisan national self concepts. The Liberals have usurped “Canada” into a party brand

The national flag is effectively the Liberal Party flag … thanks Mr. Pearson!

and marshalled the very concept of “patriotism” to build consensus for picayune material entitlements. Trudeau couldn’t even help but do this in his CNN interview with Jake Tapper this week: “We delivered $10-a-day childcare. We’re delivering a dental care program that provides free dental care for people who don’t have coverage. We’re moving forward on a price on pollution that puts more money in the pockets of eight out 10 Canadians.”

We suppose Trudeau found that argument very compelling argument to Americans marvelling at Canada’s inability to meet its basic NATO commitments.

The weird thing is that Trudeau could have deflected a lot of these criticisms by our NATO allies almost painlessly without spending any more money directly on the Canadian Armed Forces — “It’s well known that Justin Trudeau has no time for military issues, but it’s surprising that he hasn’t done a few things that wouldn’t increase the actual spending on the CAF, but would be “bookkeeping” changes that would shift some existing government spending into the military category, like militarizing the Canadian Coast Guard. (That is, moving the CCG from the Fisheries and Oceans portfolio into the National Defence portfolio, not actually putting armaments on CCG vessels. Something similar could be done with the RCMP, switching it from Public Safety to National Defence with no other funding or operational changes.) That Trudeau hasn’t chosen to make even these symbolic changes shows that he actively opposes fulfilling the commitment his government has made twice in the last ten years for reasons of his own.”

This tactic has been very electorally effective for the Liberals, no doubt, but it’s also reduced the idea of “Canada” to a smug transactional exchange. “Canada” as nothing more than what provinces and citizens can wheedle out of the commonweal in transfer payments, equalization cheques, and grandiose but poorly executed national program spending. At least we’re better than America, though, right? We’re “not American!” — we’re so much more thoughtful and compassionate, as evidenced by the entitlements we’ve voted for ourselves, secure in the knowledge that the troglodytes to the south will spend and bleed and die for our coddled asses if Russia lobs a missile from the North.

Canada has become a question of what we, citizens, are able to get, rather than one of what we’re willing to give. And we’re smarmy, preachy assholes about it, to boot. (There’s a very famous political quote we could drop in here about what citizens can do for their countries and vice versa, but you’ll know why we aren’t, if you can guess the quote! It would be a little on the nose.)

A nation that is unwilling to make serious sacrifices of blood and treasure to protect its own sovereignty is a nation that is going to cease to be a nation sooner or later — and if we judge Canada by its commitment to its military, ours is a nation that has regarded itself as a quasi-ironic post-modern punchline for many generations now.

Forgotten War – Ep 7 – Imphal ’44 Pt1 – Planning Prevents

Filed under: Britain, History, India, Japan, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

HardThrasher
Published 12 Jan 2025

DO NOT PANIC IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED THE OTHER VIDEOS IN THIS SERIES YOU CAN START HERE

A video discussing the planning phase of the Battles of Imphal and Kohima at the start of 1944

Please consider donations of any size to the Burma Star Memorial Fund who aim to ensure remembrance of those who fought with, in and against 14th Army 1941–1945 — https://burmastarmemorial.org/
(more…)

The “Thucydides Trap”

Filed under: Books, China, History, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At History Does You, Secretary of Defense Rock provides a handy explanation of the term “the Thucydides Trap”:

In the world of international relations, few concepts have captured as much attention — and sparked as much debate — as the “Thucydides Trap”. Brought to prominence by Harvard political scientist Graham Allison, the term suggests that conflict is almost inevitable when a rising power threatens to displace an established one, a dynamic often invoked to frame the strategic rivalry between the United States and China. Lauded as a National Bestseller and praised by figures like Henry Kissinger and Joe Biden, Allison’s Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? has become a staple of policy discussions and academic syllabi. Yet beneath the widespread acclaim lies a deeply flawed analysis, one that risks oversimplifying history and perpetuating a fatalistic narrative that could shape policy in dangerous ways. Far from an inescapable destiny, the lessons of history and the nuances of modern geopolitics suggest that the so-called “trap” may be more myth than inevitability.

The term “Thucydides Trap” is derived from a passage in the ancient Greek historian Thucydides’ work History of the Peloponnesian War, where he explained the causes of the conflict between Athens (the rising power) and Sparta (the ruling power) in the 4th century BC. Thucydides famously wrote

    It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.

Allison defines the “Thucydides Trap” as “the severe structural stress caused when a rising power threatens to upend a ruling one”.1 More articles by Allison using this term previously appeared in Foreign Policy and The Atlantic. The book, published in 2017, was a huge hit, being named a notable book of the year by the New York Times and Financial Times while also receiving widespread bipartisan acclaim from current and past policymakers. Historian Niall Ferguson described it as a “must-read in Washington and Beijing”.2 Senator Sam Nunn wrote, “If any book can stop a World War, it is this one”.3 A brief search on Google Scholar reveals the term “Thucydides Trap” has been cited or used nearly 19,000 times. In 2015, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull even publicly urged President Xi and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to avoid “falling into the Thucydides Trap”.4 One analyst observed that the term had become the “new cachet as a sage of U.S.-China relations”.5 The term has become so prominent that it is almost guaranteed to appear in any introductory international politics course when discussing U.S.-China relations.

Allison wrote in his essay “The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?” in The Atlantic published in 2015, “On the current trajectory, war between the United States and China in the decades ahead is not just possible, but much more likely than recognized at the moment” forewarning, “judging by the historical record, war is more likely than not”.6 A straightforward analysis of the 16 cases in the book and previous essays might indicate that, based on historical precedent, there is approximately a 75 percent likelihood of the United States and China engaging in war within the next several decades. Adding the additional cases from the Thucydides Trap Website would still leave a 66 percent chance, more likely than not, that two nuclear-armed superpowers will go to war with one another, a horrifying and unprecedented proposition.7

With such alarm, it’s no surprise that the concept gained such widespread attention. The term is simple to understand and in under 300 pages, Allison delivers a sweeping historical narrative, drawing striking parallels between events from ancient Greece to the present day.8 International Relations as a field often struggles to break through in the public discourse, but Destined for War broke through, making a broad impact on academic and popular discourse.

    1. Graham Allison, Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), 29.

    2. Ibid., iii.

    3. Ibid., vi.

    4. Quoted by Alan Greeley Misenheimer, Thucydides’ Other “Traps”: The United States, China, and the Prospect of “Inevitable” War (Washington: National Defense University, 2019), 8.

    5. Misenheiemer, 1.

    6. “Thucydides’s Trap Case File” Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, accessed December 31, 2024

    7. Graham Allison, “The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?” The Atlantic, September 24, 2015.

    8. Misenheimer details what Thucydides actually said about the origins of the Peloponnesian War, 10-17.

The Writings of Cicero – Cicero and the Power of the Spoken Word

Filed under: Europe, History, Law — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

seangabb
Published 25 Aug 2024

This lecture is taken from a course I delivered in July 2024 on the Life and Writings of Cicero. It covers these topics:

• Introduction – 00:00:00
• The Deficiencies of Modern Oratory – 00:01:20
• The Greeks and Oratory – 00:06:38
• Athens: Government by Lottery and Referendum – 00:08:10
• The Power of the Greek Language – 00:17:41
• The General Illiteracy of the Ancients – 00:21:06
• Greek Oratory: Lysias, Gorgias, Demosthenes – 00:28:38
• Macaulay as Speaker – 00:34:44
• Attic and Asianic Oratory – 00:36:56
• The Greek Conquest of Rome – 00:39:26
• Roman Oratory – 00:43:23
• Cicero: Early Life – 00:43:23
• Cicero in Greece – 00:46:03
• Cicero: Early Legal Career – 00:46:03
• Cicero: Defence of Roscius – 00:47:49
• Cicero as Orator (Sean Reads Latin) – 00:54:45
• Government of the Roman Empire – 01:01:16
• The Government of Sicily – 01:03:58
• Verres in Sicily – 01:06:54
• The Prosecution of Verres – 01:11:20
• Reading List – 01:24:28
(more…)

QotD: The rise of coal in England

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

As for conditions on the eve of coal’s rapid rise in the late sixteenth century, they were actually even less intense. Following the Black Death, London’s population took centuries to recover, and by 1550 was still below its estimated medieval peak. Having once had over 70-80,000 souls, by 1550 it had only recovered to about 50,000. And the woodlands fuelling London were clearly still intact. Foreign visitors in the 1550s, who mostly stayed close to the city, described the English countryside as “all enclosed with hedges, oaks, and many other sorts of trees, so that in travelling you seem to be in one continued wood”, and remarked that the country had “an abundance of firewood”.1 Even in the 1570s, when London’s population had likely begun to finally push past its medieval peak, the city seems to have drawn its wood from a much smaller radius than before. Whereas in the crunch of the 1300s it seemingly needed to draw firewood from as far as 17 miles away over land, in the 1570s even a London MP, with every interest in exaggerating the city’s demands, complained that it only sometimes had to source wood from as far away as just 12 miles.2

And not far along the coast from the city were also the huge woodlands of the Weald, which stretched across the southeastern counties of Sussex, Surrey and Kent, and which did not even send much of their wood to London at all. Firewood from the Weald was not only exported to the Low Countries and the northern coast of France, but those exports more than tripled between 1490 and the early 1530s, from some 1.5 million billets per year to over 4.7 million. That level was still being reached in 1550, when not interrupted by on-and-off war with France, but by then the Weald was also meeting yet another new demand, for making iron.3

Ironmaking was extremely wood-hungry. In the 1550s Weald, making just a single ton of “pig” or cast iron, fit only for cannon or cooking pots, required almost 4 tons of charcoal, which in turn required roughly another 28 tons or so of seasoned wood. England in the early sixteenth century had imported the vast majority of its iron from Spain, but between 1530 and 1550 Wealden pig iron production increased eightfold. The expansion would have demanded, on a very conservative estimate, the sustained annual output of at least 50,000 acres of woodland — an area over sixty times the size of New York’s Central Park. Yet even this hugely understates the true scale of the expansion, as pig iron needed to be refined into bar or wrought iron in order to be fit for most uses, which required twice as much charcoal again — or in other words, a total of 86 tons of seasoned wood had to be first baked and then burned, just to make one ton of bar iron from the ore. And all this was just the beginning. By the 1590s the output of the Wealden ironworks had more than tripled again, for pig iron alone (though the efficiency of charcoal usage had also halved — a story for another time, perhaps).4

Given the rapidity of these changes, it will come as no surprise that there were complaints from the locals about how much the ironworks had increased the price of fuel for their homes. No doubt the wood being exported was having a similar effect as well. But the 1540s and 50s were also time of rapid general inflation, because of a dramatic debasement of the currency initiated by Henry VIII to pay for his wars. This not only made imports significantly more expensive, and so likely spurred much of the activity in the Weald to replace increasingly unaffordable iron from Spain, but they also made exports significantly cheaper for buyers abroad — and thus unaffordable for the English themselves.

In 1548-9, in a desperate bid to keep prices down, royal proclamations repeatedly and futilely banned the export of English wheat, malt, oats, barley, butter, cheese, bacon, beef, tallow, hides, and leather, to which the following year were added — like a game of inflation whack-a-mole — rye, peas, beans, bread, biscuits, mutton, veal, lamb, pork, ale, beer, wool, and candles. And of course charcoal and wood.5 For us to have records of the Weald exporting large quantities of wood in 1550 then, they must either have been sold through special royal licence, or have all been shipped out before the ban came in force just halfway through the year in May. Presumably a great deal more than recorded was also smuggled out. In 1555, parliament saw the need to put the ban on exporting victuals and wood into law, adding severe penalties. Transgressing merchants would lose their ship and have to pay a fine worth double the value of the contraband goods, while the ship’s mariners would see all their worldly possessions seized, and be imprisoned for at least a year without bail.6

It’s perhaps no wonder that the Weald’s ironworks continued to expand at such a rapid pace: the export ban would have freed up a great deal of woodland for their use. And ironmaking soon spread to other parts of England too, to where it did not have to compete for fuel with people’s homes. Given iron was significantly more valuable by both weight and volume than wood, it could easily bear the cost of transporting it from further away, and so could be made much further inland, away from the coasts and rivers whose woodlands served cities. In the early seventeenth century, iron ore and pig iron from the southwest of England was sometimes shipped all the way to well-wooded Ireland for smelting or refining into bar.7 In the early eighteenth century scrap iron from as far away as even the Netherlands was being recycled in the forested valleys of southwestern Scotland.8

Whenever ironmaking hit the limits of what could be sustainably grown in an area, it simply expanded into the next place where wood was cheap. And there was almost always another place. England, having had to import some three quarters of its iron from Spain in the 1530s, by the 1580s was almost entirely self-sufficient, after which the total amount of iron it produced using charcoal continued to grow, reaching its peak another two hundred years later in the 1750s.9 Had iron-making not been able to find sustainable supplies of fuel within England, it would have disappeared within just a few years rather than experiencing almost two centuries of expansion.10

And that’s just iron. The late sixteenth century also saw the rapid rise in England of a charcoal-hungry glass-making industry too. Green glass for small bottles had long been made in some of England’s forests in small quantities, but large quantities of glass for windows had had to be imported from the Low Countries and France. Just as with iron, however, the effect of debasement was to make the imports unaffordable for the English, and so French workers were enticed over in the 1550s and 60s to make window glass in the Weald. Soon afterwards, Venetian-style crystal-clear drinking glasses were being made there too.

What makes glass even more interesting than iron, however, is that its breakability meant it could not be made too far away from the cities in which it would be sold, and so had to compete directly with people’s homes for its fuel. Yet by the 1570s crystal glass was even being made even within London itself. Despite charcoal supplies being by far the largest cost of production, over the course of the late sixteenth century the price of glass in England remained stable, making it increasingly common and affordable while the price of pretty much everything else rose.11

What we have then is not evidence of a mid-sixteenth-century shortage of wood for fuel, and certainly not of those demands causing deforestation. It is instead evidence of truly unprecedented demands being generally and sustainably met.

And despite these unprecedented demands, the intensity with which under-woods were exploited for fuel seems to have actually decreased. During the medieval population peaks, the woods and hedges that supplied London had been squeezed for more fuel by simply cropping the trunks and branches more often, cutting them away every six or seven years rather than waiting for them to grow into larger poles or logs. After the Black Death killed off half the population, the cropping cycle could again lengthen to about eleven. But under-woods in the mid-sixteenth century were being cropped on average only twelve or so years — about twice as long a cycle as before the Black Death — which by the nineteenth century had lengthened still further to fourteen or fifteen.12

The lengthening of the cropping cycle can imply a number of things, and we’ll get to them all. But one possibility is that in order to meet unprecedented demands, more firewood was being collected at the expense of the other major use of trees: for timber.

Anton Howes, “The Coal Conquest”, Age of Invention, 2024-10-04.

    1. Estienne Perlin, “A description of England and Scotland” [1558], in The Antiquarian Repertory, vol.1 (1775), p.231. Perlin must have visited Britain in early 1553, as he mentions the arrival of a new French ambassador, which occurred in April 1553, as well as the wedding of Lady Jane Grey, which occurred in May of that year. Also Danielo Barbaro, “Report (May 1551)” in Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Vol 5: 1534-1554 (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1873). And: Paul Warde and Tom Williamson, “Fuel Supply and Agriculture in Post-Medieval England”, The Agricultural History Review 62, no. 1 (2014), p.71

    2. Galloway et al., p.457 for the estimate of 17.4 miles overland as the outer limit of London’s firewood supply; Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, Vol I: 1558-1581, ed. T.E. Hartley (Leicester University Press, 1981), p.370: specifically, the London MP Rowland Hayward complained of the cost of firewood billets and charcoal having increased in price over the previous 30 years (which would encompass the period of debasement-induced inflation), before noting that “Sometimes the want of wood has driven the City to make provision in such places as they have been driven to carry it 12 miles by land”.

    3. Mavis E. Mate, Trade and Economic Developments, 1450-1550: The Experience of Kent, Surrey and Sussex (Boydell Press, 2006), pp.83, 92, 101.

    4. These statistics are derived from a combination of Peter King, “The Production and Consumption of Bar Iron in Early Modern England and Wales”, The Economic History Review 58, no. 1 (1 February 2005), pp.1–33 for the iron production estimates, and G. Hammersley, “The Charcoal Iron Industry and Its Fuel, 1540-1750”, The Economic History Review 26, no. 4 (1973), pp.593–613 for the estimates of how much charcoal, wood, and land was required at a given date to produce a given quantity of pig or bar iron.

    5. Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin, eds., Tudor Royal Proclamations., Vol. I: The Early Tudors (1485-1553) (Yale University Press, 1964), proclamations nos. 304, 310, 318, 319, 345, 357, 361, 365, 366.

    6. 1 & 2 Philip & Mary, c.5 (1555)

    7. William Brereton, Travels in Holland, the United Provinces, England, Scotland and Ireland 1634-1635, ed. Edward Hawkins (The Chetham Society, 1844), p.147

    8. T. C. Smout, ed., “Journal of Henry Kalmeter’s Travels in Scotland, 1719-20”, in Scottish Industrial History: A Miscellany, vol. 14, 4 (Scottish History Society, 1978), p.19

    9. See King. Note that there was an interruption to this growth in the mid-seventeenth century, for reasons I mention later on.

    10. There was a period in the early-to-mid seventeenth century when English ironmaking stagnated, but this was due to the growth of a competitive ironmaking industry in Sweden.

    11. D. W. Crossley, “The Performance of the Glass Industry in Sixteenth-Century England”, The Economic History Review 25, no. 3 (1972), pp.421–33

    12. Galloway et al. On cropping cycles in particular, see pp.454-5: they note how the average cropping of wood in their sample c.1300 was about every seven years, but by 1375-1400 — once population pressures had receded due to the Black Death — the average had increased to every eleven. See also Rackham, pp.140-1. John Worlidge, Systema agriculturæ (1675), p.96 mentions that coppice “of twelve or fifteen years are esteemed fit for the axe. But those of twenty years’ standing are better, and far advance the price. Seventeen years’ growth affords a tolerable fell”.

January 12, 2025

Big Serge updates War Plan Red for a 2025 invasion of Justin Trudeau’s “post-national” “genocide” state

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

After the farcical attempt by outgoing PM Justin Trudeau to pretend that he somehow has changed his mind and now likes and wants to defend the country he’s described variously as a “post-national state” with no core beliefs, steeped in white supremacy and misogyny, and still engaged in “genocide”, Big Serge suggests the US invasion plan should change like this:

When Trump invades Canada, the key will be rapid advances in the opening 48 hours to take advantage of Canada’s odd force disposition.

The country’s political and economic center of gravity is the urban corridor from Toronto to Montreal, but a significant share of the Canadian Army is dispersed, with large garrisons in Quebec, Halifax, and the western provinces. Only handful of brigades are garrisoned in the critical theater.

The war will be won quickly and decisively, without massive destruction of Canadian cities, if American forces can establish blocking positions to isolate the urban corridor from peripheral Canadian garrisons. In this maneuver scheme, we utilize highly mobile elements including 1st Cavalry Division and airborne forces to block the highways into Toronto, while an eastern screening group isolates the urban centers from reinforcements scrambling in from Quebec.

We envision inserting HIMARS at operational depths via Chinook slings, saturating Canadian road traffic with rocketry. A mobile firebase (“Firebase Maple”) will be established north of Toronto near Lake Simcoe that will have a dominant position over the city’s northern approach.

With reinforcements unable to scramble into the critical theater and Toronto severed from the cities in the eastern corridor, the Canadian 31st and 32nd Brigade Groups will be isolated and destroyed. Unconditional surrender is anticipated within 14 days.

If there is a Canadian insurgency, we’re calling it the Maplejideen.

As an addendum, artillery airlifted onto Isle Royale in Lake Superior will support an advance out of Minnesota towards Thunder Bay, which will add an additional level of interdiction on Canadian reinforcements moving eastward by rail.

People are so mad about this!

And after much kerfuffle among the easily trolled, he suggests:

There’s no community note on this post which means it has been fact checked as true by real patriots.

As to why Trump would want to invade a frozen failed state on the brink of bankruptcy, even Big Serge doesn’t have an answer.

Waffen SS T-34s Go into Battle! – Prokhorovka Part 5

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 11 Jan 2025

A shocking twist at Prokhorovka as the Germans unleash a new weapon — captured T-34s! As Das Reich tries to hold the line, these iconic Soviet tanks turn their guns on former comrades. On the other side of the Psel, Totenkopf‘s Tiger tanks lead the drive forward.
(more…)

Quebec within the British Empire after 1760

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, France, History, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Fortissax, in response to a question about the historical situation of Quebec within Canada, outlines the history from before the Seven Years’ War (aka the “French and Indian War” to Americans) through the American Revolution, the 1837-38 rebellions, the Durham Report, and Confederation:

First and foremost, Canada itself, as a state — an administrative body, if you will — was originally founded by France. Jacques Cartier named the region in 1535, and Samuel de Champlain established the first permanent French settlement in North America in Quebec City in 1608. This settlement would become the largest and most populous administrative hub for the entire territory. Canada was a colony within the broader territory of New France, which stretched from as far north as Tadoussac all the way down to Louisiana. It included multiple hereditary land-owning noblemen of Norman extraction.

Much of the original territory of New France

During the Seven Years’ War, on 8 September 1760, General Lévis and Pierre de Vaudreuil surrendered the colony of Canada to the British after the capitulation of Montreal. Though the British had effectively won the war, the Conquest’s details still had to be negotiated between Great Britain and France. In the interim, the region was placed under a military regime. As per the Old World’s “rules of war”, Britain assured the 60,000 to 70,000 French inhabitants freedom from deportation and confiscation of property, freedom of religion, the right to migrate to France, and equal treatment in the fur trade. These assurances were formalized in the 55 Articles of the Capitulation of Montreal, which granted most of the French demands, including the rights to practice Roman Catholicism, protections for Seigneurs and clergymen, and amnesty for soldiers. Indigenous allies of the French were also assured that their rights and privileges would be respected.

The Treaty of Paris in 1763 officially ended the war and renamed the French colony of “Canada” as “the Province of Quebec”. Initially, its borders included parts of present-day Ontario and Michigan. To address growing tensions between Britain and the Thirteen Colonies and to maintain peace in Quebec, the British Parliament passed the Quebec Act in 1774. This act solidified the French-speaking Catholic population’s rights, such as the free practice of Catholicism, restoration of French civil law, and exemption from oaths referencing Protestant Christianity. These provisions satisfied the Québécois Seigneurs (land-owning nobleman), and clergy by preserving their traditional rights and influence. However, some Anglo settlers in America resented the Act, viewing it as favoring the French Catholic majority. Despite this, the Act helped maintain stability in Quebec, ensuring it remained loyal to Britain during the American Revolutionary War and Quebec was fiercely opposed to liberal French revolutionaries.

British concessions, from the terms of the 1763 Treaty of Paris to the Quebec Act of 1774, safeguarded the cultural and religious identity of Quebec’s French-speaking Catholic population, fostering their loyalty during a period of significant upheaval in North America. Following this period, merchant families such as the Molsons began establishing themselves in Montreal, alongside early Loyalist settlers who trickled into areas now known as the Eastern Townships. These merchant families quickly ingratiated themselves with the local Norman lords and seigneurs.

The Lower Canada Rebellion arose in 1837-1838 due to the Château Clique oligarchy (an alliance of Anglo-Scottish industrialists and French noble landowners), in Quebec refusing to grant legislative power to the French Canadian majority. The rebellion was not solely a French Canadian effort; to the chagrin of both chauvinistic Anglo-Canadians and French Canadians, who in recent years believed it was either a brutal crackdown on French degeneracy, or a heroic class struggle of French peasants against an oppressive Anglo elite. It included figures like Wolfred Nelson, an Anglo-Quebecer who personally led troops into battle.

In response to the unrest following the rebellions of 1837-1838, Lord Durham, a British noble, was sent to Canada to investigate and propose solutions. His controversial recommendation, outlined in the Durham Report of 1839, was to abolish the separate legislatures of Upper Canada (Ontario) and Lower Canada (Quebec) and merge them into a single entity: the Province of Canada. This unification aimed to demographically and culturally assimilate the French Canadian population by creating an English-speaking majority.

However, the strategy failed for multiple reasons, and was given up shortly after. Lord Durham, having neither been born nor raised in the New World, underestimated the complexities of Canadian society, which was a unique fusion of Old World ideas in a New World setting. His assumption that French Canadians could be assimilated ignored their strong cultural identity, rooted in large families, which encouraged high birth rates as a means of survival. While Durham hoped unification would erode divisions, the old grievances between the British and French began to dissipate naturally.

The Province of Canada, whose unofficial capital was Montreal, where the two groups mixed

Despite Lord Durham’s intentions, French Canadians maintained their dominance in Quebec. Families averaged five children per household for over 230 years, a trend actively encouraged by the Catholic Church’s policy of La Revanche des Berceaux (the Revenge of the Cradles). This strategy aimed to preserve French Canadian culture and identity amidst the British short-lived attempts at assimilation. In Montreal, British industrialists expanded their influence by forging alliances with French landowning nobles through business partnerships and intermarriage. This blending of elites produced a bilingual Anglo-French upper class that became historically influential.

Such alliances drew on long-standing connections established as early as 1763 and later exemplified by the North West Company (NWC). The NWC in particular is interesting as a prominent fur trading enterprise of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in that it embodied this fusion of cultures. Led primarily by Anglo-Scots, the company’s leaders frequently formed unions or marriages with French Canadian women, fostering vital ties with the French Canadian communities crucial to their trade. Simon McTavish, known as the “father” of the NWC, maintained alliances with French Canadian families, while his nephew, William McGillivray, and other leaders like Duncan McGillivray followed similar paths. Explorers such as Alexander MacKenzie and David Thompson married French women. These unions strengthened familial and cultural bonds, shaping the broader Anglo-French collaboration that defined this period.

This relative harmony between Anglo and French Canadians continued with the formation of the modern Canadian state in 1867 during Confederation. Sir John A. Macdonald deliberately chose George-Étienne Cartier as his second-in-command. This collaboration contributed to the emergence of Canada’s ethnically Anglo-French elite, who have historically been bilingual. This legacy is evident in the backgrounds of many Canadian politicians, such as the Trudeaus, Mulroneys, Martins, Cartiers, and countless others who have both Anglo-Canadian and French-Canadian roots.

In more recent history, this dynamic has been further solidified by the federal government, where higher-paid positions often require bilingual proficiency. Interestingly, about 20% of Canada’s population is bilingual, reflecting the ongoing influence of this historical coexistence.

    The last cannon which is shot on this continent in defence of Great Britain will be fired by the hand of a French Canadian.
    ~ George Etienne Cartier

How to Make a Wallclock | Episode 4

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

Paul Sellers
Published 30 Aug 2024

The panel for the clock requires a hole for the clock movement, and Paul has chosen a clock insert because it’s accurate and long-lasting.

To install the insert requires one hole, and though you may choose a different insert type and size, the steps will be the same or very similar.

We walk you through the process step-by-step and cut the hole using only a coping saw. Following this, we focus on establishing an exact-sized bevel to create the raised panel and use only a common bench plane to create perfect angles that match the grooves they must fit into without any gaps.
(more…)

QotD: Kaiser Wilhelm II

Filed under: Germany, Government, History, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Following the all-too brief reign of Frederick III, his son Wilhelm II, grandson of the first German Emperor, took power in 1888 (known as the “year of the three emperors”). From the start, the young Wilhelm was determined not to be the reserved figure of his grandfather and still less the liberal reformer that his ill-fated father had wished to be. Instead, Wilhelm believed it was his right and duty to be directly involved in the country’s governing.

This was completely incompatible with Bismarck’s system, which had centralized power upon his own person. With uncharacteristic focus and subtlety, Wilhelm sought to reclaim the power that his grandfather had ceded to the chancellor. This was not to prove especially difficult; Bismarck’s position had always relied upon his indispensability to the emperor. Thus, when Bismarck offered his resignation (as he often did during disputes) Wilhelm merely accepted it. The last great man of the wars of unification had now disappeared from the balance.

While the German Empire never became a true autocracy, Wilhelm succeeded in creating what historian, and biographer of the Kaiser, John C. Röhl called a “personalist” system.1 The Kaiser had significant power over personnel. Promotions in the officer corps required his assent. Advancement within civil service (from which civilian ministers were appointed) was also dependent on his favor. By exercising this power, Wilhelm was able to ensure the highest levels of the German government were men agreeable to his point of view. Though they were not mere “yes men”, Wilhelm ensured that they were knowingly dependent on his favor for their position. The Kaiser — even to the end of the monarchy — exercised considerable “negative power” (as Röhl termed it.)2 While Wilhelm’s ability to actively make policy was limited, anything he disapproved of was simply not proposed.

Wilhelm II’s reign marked a departure from the more restrained leadership of his predecessors, as he sought to assert direct influence over the German Empire’s governance and military affairs. This shift toward a more “personalist” system, where loyalty to the Kaiser outweighed true statesmanship, weakened the effectiveness of German leadership and contributed to its eventual strategic missteps. The rigid adherence to the Schlieffen Plan and the technocratic focus on material advantages, such as firepower and mobility, overshadowed the need for adaptable strategic thinking. These failures in both leadership and military planning set the stage for Germany’s disastrous involvement in World War I, where an empire led by personalities rather than policies was ill-prepared for the complexities of modern warfare. Ultimately, Wilhelm’s influence and the culture of sycophancy he fostered played a pivotal role in leading Germany down the path of ruin.

Kiran Pfitzner and Secretary of Defense Rock, “The Kaiser and His Men: Civil-Military Relations in Wilhelmine Germany”, Dead Carl and You, 2024-10-02.

    1. John C. G. Röhl, Kaiser Wilhelm II: A Concise Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2014).

    2. Negative power refers to the ability of an actor or group to block, veto, or prevent actions, decisions, or policies from being implemented, rather than directly initiating or shaping outcomes.

January 11, 2025

Euphemizing organized gang rapes of children as “grooming” won’t work much longer

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

It’s possible that the current upswell of anger about the decade-long cover-up of organized child rape gangs in English towns and cities may come to nothing … or it could result in a complete breakdown of law and order:

Like professional basketball, those accused of being members of “grooming gangs” tend to be monocultural.

The grooming gang thing has really blown up in the past couple of weeks. I’m not sure wholly why myself but a couple of guesses.

One is that the media really couldn’t report all that much — and for the same reason that Tommy Robinson got jailed one time around. Because there have been multiple ongoing cases and full reporting of one could — and probably would too — prejudice a jury in subsequent cases. So, those ongoing cases mean that the subject is more or less sub judice and can’t, in volume or detail, be talked about.

Thus things like Guardian reporting. Where you get the news that a gang has been tried, found guilty, sent off to jail. And no comment on who they were. Well, except for a list of names all of which are, shall we say, less than Anglo Saxon or even Viking in origin. We all draw our own conclusions at that point.

[…]

The number of abused — which means children raped, recall, arses blown up with pumps so that adult dicks can multiply penetrate to be detailed — starts to be counted up into the thousands. The tens of thousands perhaps.

There’s a point there at which I don’t think that normal societal agreement to allow the authorities to handle things works any more. At some point along that spectrum then significant civil violence breaks out.

Which brings me to the two questions. What is that number which, when known, leads to actual riots? And no, I don’t mean 15 meatheads lobbing half bricks at the police. Actual real and sustained loss of civilian authority control. The second, obviously, is are we going to reach that number?

In short, what is the level of betrayal of these girls that leaves the mob triumphant over law and order?

What really worries me is that I have a horrible — even if still slight at this point — suspicion that there was enough vileness done to enough young girls that we’re going to find out.

On Substack, Francis Turner shares concerns about the mass rapes of children and young women over too many years:

The scandal has been going on for at least 25 years and probably a decade more. That means that every year around 1000 new girls have been gang raped by the gangs.

Every year around 1000 new girls have been gang raped by the gangs

There are roughly 300,000 girls of each year cohort in the UK so that means one in around 300 girls of any age group has been gang-raped. Given that there are large chunks of the UK which are not places where the ~50 identified rape gangs have operated and indeed are places without residents of the relevant ethnicity (primarily Pakistani and Somali in a couple of cases) that means that the number goes way up in those areas. It seems likely that in one those 50 areas the ratio of new victims to their year group is more like 1 in 100 or 1%, especially when you remove the Pakistani girls that probably weren’t targeted even if some of them were in fact abused at home.

In places like Telford if you see a school year group photo for any year in a Comprehensive school in the last 30+ years at least one of the girls in that photo was being gang-raped

If successful steps had been taken in ~2010 to stop the abuse then about 15,000 girls would not have been gang-raped.

The Tory party and civil service disgust of Tommy Robinson has had the result that about 5000 girls were gang raped between when Tommy Robinson started going about the issue in around 2018 and 2023 when Sunak finally set up the national Grooming Gangs Taskforce.

If Substack would let me do a table this would be easier. However here is a summary of girls gang-raped under the prime ministers of this century based on a simple linear model

Starmer: 500 (to date)
Sunak: 1700
Truss: <100
Johnson: 3000+
May: 3000
Cameron: 6000+
Brown: 3000-
Blair: 10,000

Probably half of Blair’s 10,000 was before anyone was aware that this was a systemic problem, but it was known to be a potential problem by at least 2004 when

    [a] Channel 4 documentary about claims young white girls in Bradford were being groomed for sex by Asian abusers is delayed as police forces warn it could inflame racial tensions. It was finally shown three months later.

If the UK had got serious about stopping grooming gangs back in 2004 then over half of the gang rape victims could have been saved from such a terrible experience.

Take that 35,000 number a different way. There are roughly 35 million women in the UK. So one in a 1000 women in the UK have been gang-raped over the decades.

We Produced a Video with 22 Students from the University of Zürich (Hoplite Revolution Debate)

Filed under: Europe, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

SandRhoman History
Published 22 Sept 2024

In this video, we will look at the core arguments in the hoplite revolution debate to provide you with 1) an overview of the debate itself, 2) a glimpse into warfare in ancient Greece, and 3) evidence of why historical revisionism is necessary. To achieve this, we will follow a similar overview used in a seminar we taught at the University of Zürich in the spring of 2024. Throughout the video, the participants of this seminar will contribute the expertise they have acquired by providing critical information about the ancient primary sources they analysed during the seminar.

Chapters:
00:00 Revisionism, really?!
04:21 19th Century Germany and Ancient Greece
05:39 A Hoplite Revolution?
11:53 Political Implications
16:19 Agonal Warfare (Fair War?)
22:49 Training and Discipline
25:53 Phalanx Formation
30:13 Exclusivity of Hoplites
33:04 Revisionist Battle
36:46 History is not the past.
(more…)

QotD: “Composite” pre-gunpowder infantry units

Filed under: China, Gaming, History, Middle East, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I should be clear I am making this term up (at least as far as I know) to make a contrast between what Total War has, which are single units made up of soldiers with identical equipment loadouts that have a dual function (hybrid infantry) and what it doesn’t have: units composed of two or more different kinds of infantry working in concert as part of a single unit, which I am going to call composite infantry.

This is actually a very old concept. The Neo-Assyrian Empire (911-609 BC) is one of the earliest states where we have pretty good evidence for how their infantry functioned – there was of course infantry earlier than this, but Bronze Age royal records from Egypt, Mesopotamia or Anatolia tend to focus on the role of elites who, by the late Bronze Age, are increasingly on chariots. But for the early Iron Age Neo-Assyrian empire, the fearsome effectiveness of its regular (probably professional) infantry, especially in sieges, was a key component of its foreign-policy-by-intimidation strategy, so we see a lot more of them.

That infantry was split between archers and spear-and-shield troops, called alternately spearmen (nas asmare) or shield-bearers (sab ariti). In Assyrian artwork, they are almost always shown in matched pairs, each spearman paired off with a single archer, physically shielding the archer from attack while the archer shoots. The spearmen are shown with one-handed thrusting spears (of a fairly typical design: iron blade, around 7 feet long) and a shield, either a smaller round shield or a larger “tower” shield. Assyrian records, meanwhile, reinforce the sense that these troops were paired off, since the number of archers and spearmen typically match perfectly (although the spearmen might have subtypes, particularly the “Qurreans” who may have been a specialist type of spearman recruited from a particular ethnic group; where the Qurreans show up, if you add Qurrean spearmen to Assyrian spearmen, you get the number of archers). From the artwork, these troops seem to have generally worked together, probably lined up in lines (in some cases perhaps several pairs deep).

The tactical value of this kind of composite formation is obvious: the archers can develop fire, while the spearmen provide moving cover (in the form of their shields) and protection against sudden enemy attack by chariot or cavalry with their spears. The formation could also engage in shock combat when necessary; the archers were at least sometimes armored and carried swords for use in close combat and of course could benefit (at least initially) from the shields of the front rank of spearmen.

The result was self-shielding shock-capable foot archer formations. Total War: Warhammer also flirts with this idea with foot archers who have their own shields, but often simply adopts the nonsense solution of having those archers carry their shields on their backs and still gain the benefit of their protection when firing, which is not how shields work (somewhat better are the handful of units that use their shields as a firing rest for crossbows, akin to a medieval pavisse).

We see a more complex version of this kind of composite infantry organization in the armies of the Warring States (476-221 BC) and Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) periods in China. Chinese infantry in this period used a mix of weapons, chiefly swords (used with shields), crossbows and a polearm, the ji which had both a long spearpoint but also a hook and a striking blade. In Total War: Three Kingdoms, which represents the late Han military, these troop-types are represented in distinct units: you have a regiment of ji-polearm armed troops, or a regiment of sword-and-shield troops, or a regiment of crossbowmen, which maneuver separately. So you can have a block of polearms or a block of crossbowmen, but you cannot have a mixed formation of both.

Except that there is a significant amount of evidence suggesting that this is exactly how the armies of the Han Dynasty used these troops! What seems to have been common is that infantry were organized into five-man squads with different weapon-types, which would shift their position based on the enemy’s proximity. So against a cavalry or chariot charge, the ji might take the front rank with heavier crossbows in support, while the sword-armed infantry moved to the back (getting them out of the way of the crossbows while still providing mass to the formation). Of course against infantry or arrow attack, the swordsmen might be moved forward, or the crossbowmen or so on (sometimes there were also spearmen or archers in these squads as well). These squads could then be lined up next to each other to make a larger infantry formation, presenting a solid line to the enemy.

(For more on both of these military systems – as well as more specialist bibliography on them – see Lee, Waging War (2016), 89-99, 137-141.)

Bret Devereaux, “Collection: Total War‘s Missing Infantry-Type”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2022-04-01.

January 10, 2025

Even the state-subsidized flappers in the media are glad to see Justin Trudeau go

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

In The Line, Andrew MacDougall hits the highs and lows — mostly lows — of Justin Trudeau’s prime ministership since 2015:

Justin Trudeau has always had a strong affinity for the symbolic gesture, especially when the media are around to record it.

And so the Trudeau era ends, not with a bang, but a simper.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dialled it up to “peak emotive” on Monday during his resignation speech at Rideau Cottage, even if he was only out to sing the tunes nobody wants to dance to anymore. Not even the appearance of a few prime ministerial tears could convince Canadians this day was anything but long overdue.

Much like how 1980s Hollywood cock rock once struggled to cope with the rawness of early 90s grunge, Trudeau’s cloying, self-obsessed mid-2010s Liberalism has run straight into the buzzsaw of mid-20s proto-populism. Trudeau might still label himself a fighter, but if he ever bothered to look around he would see that precious few people remain in his corner. Canadians have simply grown tired of being told how shit they are by the man they feel has done more than his fair share of putting Canada into the shitter.

Whether that’s a fair assessment of Trudeau’s efforts as a leader is beside the point. As Brutus Freeland has taken to saying, it’s all about the “vibes”. Even the quote-unquote “Trudeau media” is gleefully writing his obituary. That’s how bad things have gotten for Trudeau the man. We’re not in 2015 anymore, Toto.

I’m not sure that Justin Trudeau “does” introspection, but it shouldn’t be hard for him to see how he got here from there. Beginning with hypocrisy.

Trudeau promised to do things differently, but kept many of the same governmental command-and-control measures implemented by the hated Stephen Harper. He promised to stop cramming legislation into budget bills and then treated his own budgets as all-you-can-eat legislative buffets. Trudeau promised to be open by default, but tightened the clamps on government information.

Early talk of “sunny ways” and Conservatives being “neighbours”, not “enemies” masked a hyper-partisan who was all too eager to ascribe ill motive to his political opponents. Whether abortion, guns, convoys or trans rights, there was only ever one “correct” position for Trudeau, and anyone on the other side, no matter how well-reasoned or well-intentioned, was a sinner. In Trudeau’s Canada, everyone was a genocidaire, even if they got their citizenship yesterday and had nothing to do with the historic wrongs of residential schools. Black Lives Matter meant everyone else were racists, whether overt or closeted. Every societal wrong was an opportunity for all of us to “learn a lesson”.

But who the teacher is matters in the giving of lessons. And Trudeau, himself once a teacher, didn’t ever appear to learn any of his own.

Germany Votes – Rise of Hitler 09, September 1930

Filed under: Germany, History, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 9 Jan 2025

The September 1930 elections reshape Germany’s political landscape. With surging support for extremists like the Nazis and Communists, and declining votes for democratic parties, Weimar faces a deeply polarized future. This episode breaks down the results, voter shifts, and what this means for the Republic.
(more…)

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress