wampus

I think there's a bit more to it. US support and ability to get other countries to go along with that support, is what has provided Israel with its arms and ability to intimidate regional neighbours. If the US's global influence wanes, it's an existential threat for Israel. The US's global influence is waning. The damage done by Trump, so far, will take decades/generations to correct in a best case scenario. Israel is desperate to re-orient power dynamics in the region while they still can.

Eg. If BRICS, and specifically China/India become more dominant / insulated from US 'sanction' coersion, as they generally are trending, then China and others may take a more active role in providing trade and support to countries like Iran -- China already buys like 90% of the oil from Iran, so it isn't unbelievable that they'd have an interest in preventing Israel from randomly blowing shit up there and destabilizing their cheap, largely uncontested oil supply. Similar story for Russia, who are buying/using Iranian drones in their war in Ukraine, and will likely integrate their use more thoroughly in their military going forward given the efficacy of the tech. Either Russia or China could supply Iran with Enriched Uranium, and other tech. Especially as there's less reason to participate in any sort of Nuclear non-proliferation treaty these days, given how things have played out.

China/India have long been thought to be 'rising' super powers, with many articles/models previously forecasting their 'ascent' in the latter half of the 21st century. Israel's actions are basically accelerating the negative trends for traditional powers, as a gamble where they hope they'll come out ahead once the dust settles.

It's too bad our government doesn't seem to share this stance. There seems to be more and more cases where they use 'elbows up' type marketing messages, while implementing an 'elbows down, cheeks spread' set of practices.

Was just looking at some of the govt sector mandate letters for 2025, and.... while tariffs are mentioned, there's no real direction to take action.

Like in BC, Eby and them attempt to paint themselves as pro Canada, only to issue these lame-duck mandate letters to gov regulators/industry. An example? The closest the BC FSA (financial regulators) 2025 mandate letter comes to the subject is prolly with this line:

In the current economic and fiscal context including the threat of U.S. tariffs and other global economic challenges affecting British Columbian families, your organization is to work with ministry staff to review all existing programs and initiatives to ensure programs remain relevant, efficient, sustainable, grow the economy, and help keep costs low for British Columbians.

Note that the 'actions' directed in the second half of that line, don't actually address the threat noted in the first half. There's no push to distance from US tech companies; so long as they're cheap, sovereignty be damned.

The BC financial regulators are fully entrenched in Microsoft products / American cloud systems. So the regulator of one of our "Critical Industries" can't perform their duties without paying a subscription to a US company. Totally sounds like we're a sovereign nation to me....

Meh, a direct pissing match against a bag of piss isn't likely to go well.

Carney pre-bitchification had the right idea -- he just needs to remember what he'd been saying on the campaign trail. Like how he wasn't going to pre-emptively make concessions/statements, as that would harm trade negotiations.... but then when he gets into the hot seat, he's pre-emptively bailing on the DST. Or how he confidently said shit like "We need to focus more on the things that are in our control, as the US will do whatever the US will do" (or something along those lines) -- just let the piss bag piss himself, and focus on other markets.

Waa waa, it takes time to detangle supply chains! Well it's been 8+ months, how much progress have these companies/industries made? Any? No? Well too fuckin bad then.

It's a really good way to bribe politicians and public figures.

digital services tax.

Walk away, let him tariff whatever. Bring back the DST to make the tech companies whine. Only remove it if the US gets serious about getting something in place. zzz.

So if he isn't bothering with a trade deal, I guess Canada can bring back the DST?

No, I expect most people are so addle minded at this point that they can't read, or write, more than whatever the character limit is on twitter/x these days. People look for short pithy remarks and zingers, and then they whine and bitch about click-bait titles etc. The general readership/audience of any social media platform, is pretty lowest common denominator in terms of their appetites.

But if someone asks me a question, I'll still try to put together a somewhat thought out and transparent remark to clarify my position.

Hm? Not particularly. I do have an interest in the gender stuff in politics a bit more, and in the workforce -- in part because I had my early-life career goals dramatically changed after receiving rejection letters explicitly stating I was removed from the government worker app pool here in Canada for not identifying as either a woman, or a minority race. Almost all the friends I graduated with were in those categories, and got easy job placements with worse transcripts and less prior work experience. So I recognise that my personal history has a reason for a negative bias to these topics that others may not have experienced. That said, my personal take for what it's worth, is that DEI and equity efforts are worthwhile/valuable, but that their implementation is poorly done, and is indiscernible from discrimination on an individual basis. So, not black and white as it were.

For online discussions, I do think it's misguided to get annoyed about gendering, and that introducing explicit gender oriented stuff causes equity issues in weird, unnecessary ways. So I disagree with both the idiots going overboard about gender stuff on a car forum, and the op attempting to claim gendered-privilege on a digital forum. I think it's just as reasonable for someone to take a stance of "You're a man until proven otherwise online", as it is for someone to get pissed off that people don't believe their a stated gender of some sort; none of that gender stuff has much point in a digital space, so they're equally silly.

And while we talk about toxic masculinity, we also fail to really coalesce behind a definition of positive masculinity -- and we don't tend to talk as much about toxic female traits. So, like another item worth highlighting, particularly for the ops case, is that it's been a known 'thing' amongst people on the net for a long time, that the best way to get help for something like a problem, was to post up a question on a 'female' looking account, and then to respond to your own post with a male account and an incorrect answer talking down to the woman for being stupid. White-knights tend show up to make corrections and hand-hold the supposed woman, downvote the mean bad man, and so on. That sort of structure is another issue introduced by bringing gender into digital spaces -- but because it tends to work in favour of women it's generally ignored/accepted.

Feminism, in both meat space and digital space, isn't about equality but about removing pain points for women exclusively -- so cases of discrimination that benefit women / disadvantage men are generally ignored by supposed 'equity' movements that are fundamentally pushed by feminist interests. That disjointed equity/feminist division is one reason, I'd theorize at least, that things like the manosphere and harsh women's rights pushbacks gained popularity in some segments. If you're going to bring gender online, and complain about the issues women face when they attempt to assert their gender, without looking at how it impacts others' experience of those online spaces, nor are you looking at the positives they get for asserting that gender, I think it's wrong. I try to maintain a more egalitarian mindset, or at least I like to think I do, where people online should generally all be treated equitably.... as non-gendered faceless anonymous entities.

And to that end, as gender doesn't matter for posting to some car forum, the op should've just posted stuff as a non-gendered faceless blob. Then she'd get treated as a non-gendered faceless blob. No one would care to respond to her, or rather, they'd respond to her about as much as they'd respond to a guy, or any other non-gendered blob.

If Justin Trudeau is going to date any 'celebrity', it should be Olivia Wilde, not Katy Perry.

Olivia Wilde's ancestor, George Cockburn, is the guy responsible for burnin down the White House.

Wouldn't designating a stall or two in the women's as pee only, so that the pee'rs can go quicker without having to wait for people doin other stuff, basically rectify that.... without needing to gum up the more efficient urinal situation men get? That way they'd have that 'fast lane' option, just like guys, while guys could still have the more convenient-for-their-body urinals to use. Maybe get an engineer to make like a pee-troth for women to squat along for peeing en masse, and designate half the bathroom to that, like how urinals are done in mens rooms.

Equity should generally be about improving the situation for the disadvantaged demo, without dragging everyone else down, no? Not causing added issue for existing people / setups is also an argument for lettin trans people go wherever they're comfortable -- cause it wouldn't make sense to have to setup a bathroom for every gender identity out there.