taking a minor yet important step towards ending the ongoing genocide against Indigenous people, with a bill to repeal a key blood quantum provision of the Indian Act passing the senate
The Senate voted unanimously Thursday to advance Bill S-2 with an amendment calling for the removal of the second-generation cut-off from the Indian Act. Subsection 6(2) or the second-generation cut-off refers to a rule in the Indian Act where children are not eligible for Indian status after two generations of one non-status parent. It was added to the act in 1985. Bill S-2 was originally designed as the latest in a series of amendments to Indian Act to address remaining sex-based discrimination in registration, often tied to historical enfranchisement, the surrendering of status to become a "full citizen."
"It was an assurance that we would be eventually assimilated into Canadian society, as the lawmakers of the day knew that we could not survive if we were relegated to only marrying among ourselves to preserve status," Paul Prosper, a Mi'kmaw senator representing Nova Scotia, told the Senate in an address ahead of the vote. Prosper told the Senate the impact of the amendments could affect approximately 300,000 people over the next 40 years.
more inside baseball from APTN from a couple days ago
now the bill goes to parliament. this actually is a big deal for Indigenous people in Canada. Canada's relationship with Indigenous nations is very legalistic, so legal recognition of status for a lot of living and future people is important. 300k people is about 1/6th of the current Indigenous population of Canada
canada's czar of slava ukraini, chrystia freeland in the news (archive)
Freeland calls Ukraine a ‘fantastic investment’ as Ottawa pledges $235 million
“It is a country that will be a fantastic partner for us all, a fantastic investment for the businesses that have the courage to invest now,” she told the conference. Freeland said while Ukraine missed out on an economic boom when it secured independence in 1991, it can unleash its potential once the war Russia launched ends, through innovation and “the entrepreneurial approach that Ukrainians are taking to fighting this war.” Freeland also said that the ongoing corruption scandal in Ukraine is proof of a healthy democracy doing the hard work of investigating possible wrongdoing and seeking accountability.
definitely not the way you talk about a failed state. her overall tone in this is grim. she knows the war is lost even though she is zealous enough to never admit it. she must just be seething, getting the boot by Carney and left a backbencher to stew in her defeat. she was talked about as the architect of the first sanctions package against Russia in 2022.
Ottawa’s $235 million package for Ukraine includes $200 million for what it calls the “prioritized Ukraine requirements list,” which will be used to purchase a half billion U.S. dollars worth of goods from American suppliers. The remaining $35 million will go to NATO’s comprehensive assistance package for Ukraine.
literally just graft for contractors in the US. $200m directly to the US, and then how much of the NATO package is ultimately purchased from US weapons manufacturers? Half? this is what trump means when he talks about getting allies to invest in America. it's simply a tithe
hard to say, but @xiaohongshu@hexbear.net has posted a lot about the financial end of the american empire gaining access to/control over chinese constructed infrastructure. even with US hard power relatively waning, the dollar as reserve currency gives the fed and the US gov't a huge amount of power to shape affairs. the US is far more financially powerful relative to adversaries than they are militarily powerful.
thanks, those are quite the images
on foreign navvies in the strait, taiwan media has this to say:
Tsai said that military vessels from eight countries have made 12 transits of the Taiwan Strait so far this year, per Liberty Times. These countries include the US, UK, France, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Vietnam, which maintains friendly ties with China, was also among them.
Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), a division director at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said Vietnam’s transit signals alignment with other partners and political coordination with the US. He noted that US Navy transits declined from 15 in 2020 to five in 2024. Meanwhile, allied transits have increased, including those by the Netherlands, Turkey, and Germany.
Examples of Canada and Australia doing this in September as well as the UK/US shortly after and even the kiwis a week ago
I guess the west can count on China not to escalate based on this kind of dick waving so they have a freer hand. It's notable that the dogs are barking more than the master though.
I finished reading Seth Harp's Fort Bragg Cartel book recently. it's good and touches on a lot of stuff we cover here. The book talks about the nexus of special forces operators doing death squad work in Afghanistan getting involved in drug dealing and crime around Fort Bragg. A couple of unsolved murders of operator types are used as a vehicle to tell the story. I wished there had been more big picture analysis over more detail about individuals' rap sheets, but I found it compelling nevertheless. Fair warning that the book opens with some really disturbing accounts of death squad activities and the absolute brutality of these cowboy operator types. Lots of descriptions of violence and cruelty, so be mindful if you are triggered.
spoiler to keep the thread manageable
The theme of the book is blowback. America went to war in Afghanistan, was unable to achieve goals with conventional means, attempted to achieve goals using unaccountable death squads, the lack of accountability provides structural support for other crimes like drug trafficking, drug abuse and casual violence, then members of death squads come home. Blowback stateside comes in the form of drug violence, domestic violence, deaths of despair/addiction, PTSD, and ex-operators that act as a reserve pool of labour for clandestine wet work, foreign and domestic.
The best part of the book was his discussion of the evolution of the war in Afghanistan/Iraq and the growth in the importance of JSOC in the invasion/occupation. Harp paints a good picture of this trajectory. I wish this aspect of the book had been expanded as I think there is a lot to dig into there: the distribution of opium from Afghanistan out and connection to real international cartels, the budgetary/decision making implications for this unaccountable state-within-a-state, the implications of reliance on special ops on American force projection (I don't think the US could fight a peer war now, let alone win). The book focuses on specific people and crimes, not broad analysis. For newsheads who don't need to be convinced that these people are monsters, the relative absence of structural analysis is a bit disappointing. Maybe in a followup book.
Early in the book Harp makes a throwaway comment about how there are two types of special forces operators: heavily tattoo'd outlaw biker types and straight laced, religious teetotalers. The book centers on the outlaw biker types, specifically the three guys whose murders are discussed. Crashing out into spectacular murders and wild drug crime is by definition more visible and high profile than not crashing out and continuing to quietly do the work of empire. The current activities of JSOC/special forces/general black ops is discussed in the book in general terms, but is not the focus because by definition these things are not as visible as a tweaked out operator murdering his friend in front of both their daughters. The spectacular crashouts by the outlaw types are like the visible portion of the iceberg while the quieter, more stable work lurks invisibly.
Another thing that struck me is that the imperial machine really chews these operator types up and spits them out. I frankly have no sympathy for them on a moral basis, but nevertheless I think it is correct to identify how the machine does not support its elite soldiers as they crash out. I have a bit more sympathy for the young women who joined JSOC and were sexually harassed while they provided administrative support to facilitate the act of extrajudicial murder, but also is it your first fucking day? Who do you think these guys are?
After reading this book I rewatched Sicario from 2015. It is a glamorization of these kinds of guys applying the skills of war crimes against Mexican cartels. The disdain for anyone not part of the unit, the culture of bravado and machismo, insider/outsider attitude, and brutal violence all line up with the world that Harp portrays, though of course that movie is generally dumber and not grounded in any kind of geopolitics the way that Harp's book is.
To tie this back to news and future blowback, this article "Azov 9/11" posted earlier this thread is worth reading as a historic analysis of what this class of death squad soldiers and compradors get up to after The War is over. We've already seen a taste of that with (attempted) perpetrator of stochastic violence Ryan Routh, but he wasn't actually any kind of operator. As the American rug is pulled from Ukraine, there will be a lot of skilled combat veterans left high and dry that will disseminate into the west. some will be angry nationalists driven by ideology, but others will be more mercenary soldiers of fortune who gravitate towards around these secretive flows of money and weapons like remora.
I don't think they looked heroic but they certainly looked cool. hollywood can't make anti-war movies because hollywood can't help but make anything it depicts as glamorous and cool. that's the whole point of movies
thanks for flagging this one, I thought it was good as I read it but couldn't find it again when I went to update the POTW comment
MoA on the recently released national security strategy document in the US. No social reactionary brainworms in the past, no guarantees about comments.
This aligns with a lot of the trends we've discussed in trump 2, tide going out on the EU, Taiwan, ukraine, and the eye of sauron focusing on the western hemisphere. I intend to read the underlying later and will post back.
we've talked generally about more conciliatory attitudes towards china from the trump regime lately. has this been reflected in 'freedom of navigation' transits between taiwan and china?
This kind of waffling is positive. Even if a more China hawkish administration follows trump, like the Biden nitwits, then this is a waste of 3-4 years. That's 3-4 years the empire can't afford.
How is it rigged? Relying only on pro-UA sources that say bakhmut is still holding out?