CanadianPrime Minister Mark Carney didn't mince words.
Continue reading.Today I will talk about a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics, where the large, main power, geopolitics, is submitted to no limits, no constraints.
On the other hand, I would like to tell you that the other countries, especially intermediate powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that encompasses our values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the various states.
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Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
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It seems that every day we're reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the rules based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.
And this aphorism of Thucydides is presented as inevitable, as the natural logic of international relations reasserting itself.
And faced with this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along, to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety.
Well, it won't.
So, what are our options?
World Economic Forum
He talks about the fiction of the system we have been living in for decades. It's very good.
He also lays out what Canada has been doing in light of the rupture created by Trump:
And, what was Trump saying?
He also lays out what Canada has been doing in light of the rupture created by Trump:
We have agreed a comprehensive strategic partnership with the EU, including joining SAFE, the European defence procurement arrangements. We have signed 12 other trade and security deals on four continents in six months. The past few days, we've concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar. We're negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, Philippines and Mercosur.
We're doing something else. To help solve global problems, we're pursuing variable geometry, in other words, different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests. So, on Ukraine, we're a core member of the Coalition of the Willing and one of the largest per capita contributors to its defence and security.
On Arctic sovereignty, we stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark, and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland's future.
Our commitment to NATO's Article 5 is unwavering, so we're working with our NATO allies, including the Nordic Baltic Gate, to further secure the alliance's northern and western flanks, including through Canada's unprecedented investments in over-the-horizon radar, in submarines, in aircraft and boots on the ground, boots on the ice.
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On plurilateral trade, we're championing efforts to build a bridge between the Trans Pacific Partnership and the European Union, which would create a new trading bloc of 1.5 billion people. On critical minerals, we're forming buyers’ clubs anchored in the G7 so the world can diversify away from concentrated supply. And on AI, we're cooperating with like-minded democracies to ensure that we won't ultimately be forced to choose between hegemons and hyper-scalers.
This is not naive multilateralism, nor is it relying on their institutions. It's building coalitions that work – issues by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together.
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This is not sovereignty. It's the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination. In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice – compete with each other for favour, or to combine to create a third path with impact.
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We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn't mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture, we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just. This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and most to gain from genuine cooperation.
The powerful have their power.
But we have something too – the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together.
That is Canada's path. We choose it openly and confidently, and it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.
The world is experiencing a shift away from rules and international law, French President Emmanuel Macron told the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday.
"It's ... a shift towards a world without rules, where international law is trampled underfoot and where the only law that seems to matter is that of the strongest," Macron said, adding that what he called "imperial ambitions" were resurfacing.
Reuters
And, what was Trump saying?
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In the midst of an active campaign to burn down the Western world order by forcibly annexing territory from a NATO ally, the rogue president of the rogue United States of America ranted incoherently for some 90 minutes about windmills, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, and an apparent daddy fetish.
He confused Greenland with Iceland not once, not twice, but three times.
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The mad, delusional, ranting emperor has no clothes on. And yet there is no truth-telling child in sight. Just a coterie of shameless liars, grifters, and sycophants bent on engaging in a cover-up about the clear mental incompetence of the most powerful man on Earth.
Zeteo
You can only use the same vein so long before you have to give it a rest.
And what did he "get" after making a "deal"? Nothing.Donald Trump sounded like a fascist dictator suffering from a brain bleed during his speech yesterday at Davos. It was a national embarrassment even by the lowly standards of modern American politics.
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Trump’s screed was chillingly aggressive. He began the Greenland part of it with a thinly veiled threat against NATO, claiming his recent coup in Venezuela proves his regime is a “much greater power than people even understand.” He contrasted his purported strength with European weakness.
“We saw this in World War 2 when Denmark fell to Germany after just six hours of fighting and was totally unable to defend either itself of Greenland,” Trump said to total silence, adding that “without us, right now you'd all be speaking German and a little Japanese.” (German is in fact an official language of Switzerland.)
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Trump then channeled Hitler during the Sudetenland crisis, demanding “immediate negotiations to discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States" — or else.
“We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be frankly unstoppable. But I won't do that. Okay?"
Public Notice
Trump shortly after his speech pulled a TACO, posting on Truth Social about a vague “framework of a future deal” involving NATO and Greenland. But during a subsequent interview with CNBC, Trump was unwilling and/or unable to provide any details, instead characterizing the framework (which sure sounds like the status quo) as “a concept of a deal.”
Alas, NATO Secretary Mark Rutte confirmed later on Fox News that the status of Greenland wasn’t even discussed as part of Trump’s “framework.” The “deal” appears to be about as meaningful as a degree from Trump University.
In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s speech, cable coverage seized upon his “I won’t do that” comment as evidence he’s taken armed aggression against NATO off the table. But of course he also ruled out strikes within Venezuela until shortly before he launched them.
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That Trump backed down hours after his Davos speech is a promising sign that financial markets and diplomatic pressure (not to mention the grassroots organizing that’s taking place in the occupied Twin Cities) can still provide something of a check on his desire to carve up the world between strongmen like himself, Putin, and President Xi. But one year in, he and his regime are getting worse.
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One day after Prime Minster Carney delivered a historic speech at Davos [...] Trump huffed that Carney “wasn’t so grateful” for all America has done for his country and said, “Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, next time you make your statements.”
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He made up that “we have new steel plants being built all over the country,” claimed that “I haven’t been able to find any wind farms in China” (the country in fact operates some of the largest ones in the world), and vowed that there will soon be prosecutions over his 2020 election loss, which he delusionally claimed was “rigged. Everybody now knows that. They found out.”
He's literally rotten.
UPDATE 02:34 pm:
It's possible. Old people skin does that. But what are the excuses for the previous times photographs have shown bruises on his left hand?
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