Category: There Goes The Narrative

Reality Bites

It's Probably Nothing There Goes The Narrative Ukraine 40 Comments

Doomberg is a podcaster on financial markets whose insights I find quite valuable, although I have yet to understand why he covers his face with a green chicken cartoon. At the 14 minute mark in this interview he gets into the economics of energy and how that’s going to affect the outcome of the war in the Ukraine. In a nutshell, it’s not looking good for Zelensky.

“…once the Ukrainian counteroffensive of 2023 was defeated…it was very clear that this had converted to a grinding war of attrition and Russia was always going to win that war….I’m shocked by this…western techno-arrogance…[Russia] is not a gas station masquerading as a country. It…has a strong manufacturing base, excellent energy resources and a long history of marching east to west.”

 

Muslim Values Are Canadian Values

More Pavilions At Folkfest Religion Of Submission There Goes The Narrative 29 Comments

You’ll eat the Muhammad Torture Meat and you’ll like it;

“Hindu Forum Canada, through its legal representative, is issuing a formal notice to the Honourable Heath MacDonald, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food.”

Federal support for halal meat production raises serious concerns about equality and state neutrality. Public funding should not prioritize one religious practice while overlooking others, as this risks creating inequality rather than inclusion. Exclusive halal production models raise legitimate questions about employment equity, including whether women and non-Muslims may be indirectly excluded, and whether this aligns with Canada’s human rights framework, which guarantees equal opportunity regardless of gender or religion.

Canada is a secular state. Government should not intervene in or invest in production systems that cater exclusively to the requirements of any one religion. Granting special exemptions or preferential treatment risks undermining equality in a diverse society.

There is already significant harm within the meat industry. This reality calls for stronger, science-based animal welfare standards, not weaker ones. Conventional slaughter methods require animals to be rendered unconscious before bleeding, minimizing pain. Allowing exemptions on religious grounds raises serious ethical and policy concerns that warrant public review.

Jeffrey Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself

Media There Goes The Narrative 55 Comments

The Epstein saga is the worst-reported story of all time.

The world’s leading news organizations on a regular basis print easily debunked untruths. Crucial details, like a federal case built on a recovered memory, the chief accuser being an epic fabulist, or nearly a billion dollars in civil claims won by “survivors” who themselves may be “professional recruiters” (as one victim put it to me), are left out of coverage. Almost all of the drama is concentrated in the expectation of revelations around things that still theoretically could be true, like underage hijinks with a Clinton or Trump, or an arrangement with the Mossad, but the absence of evidence of these things is rarely reported.

Inconvenient facts excised, reporters have used remaining details to build the mother of conspiracy tales, a keyhole through which the world may see All The Secrets, except the evidence doesn’t support the marquee. On closer examination, most elements of popular belief about Epstein collapse, leaving a manic, breathlessly wrong legend that’s on track to be remembered as a combination of Salem and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Including — everything you ever wanted to know about Virginia Giuffre but they were afraid to tell you.

Elbows Down!

Gradually Then Suddenly It's Probably Nothing New Governor There Goes The Narrative 21 Comments

Since existing port facilities don’t have the capacity, I fully expect that someone will soon suggest that we access magical new export markets by shipping through Churchill. This is what Canadian exceptionalism actually amounts to: the stubborn insistence that we’re entitled to our dreams no matter how hard reality smacks us in the face.

But a recent announcement from one of Canada’s most successful natural resources exporters, saying that future exports will soon be shipped to overseas markets from a port in the state of Washington instead of Canada’s west coast, has raised fresh questions about whether some key Canadian ports even have the capacity to handle any more of those diversified goods. Any bottlenecks or other inefficiencies would only be magnified if exporters are able to hit Carney’s recent target that Canada will double non-U.S. exports over the next decade.

Clinging To Myths

Climate Cult There Goes The Narrative 20 Comments

Far from sleepwalking into an unmitigated disaster, farmers appear to have adapted quite well to the challenges posed by climate change. Or maybe climate change was just a fiction all along. Note how routine advances in crop genetics and machinery design are presented as responses to climate change as opposed to something that the ag industry, driven by the profit motive, has always done.

Spring wheat, used to make high-quality bread, yielded 58.8 bushels per acre this year, according to the government data release. That’s a gain of 77% from 30 years ago, based on a three-year average. Canola yields nearly doubled, reaching 44.7 bushels per acre, also based on a 1994-1996 average.

While most climate ⁠science paints a bleak picture for global food supply, with a study in Nature this year forecasting ‌up to 40% reduction in North America’s wheat harvest by 2100, the agricultural experts Reuters interviewed said that with climate adaptation strategies the prairies can continue to produce bigger and bigger crops in the future.

Coulda Had A Pipeline

Art Of The Deal Drill, Baby, Drill There Goes The Narrative 12 Comments

Oilprice;

Iraq’s Oil Ministry has revealed that it has sent out exclusive invitations to several major U.S. energy firms to develop the country’s huge West Qurna 2 oilfield following the withdrawal of Russian oil number two Lukoil after Washington ratcheted up sanctions on Moscow. “It’s a huge turnaround in the trajectory it [Iraq] had been headed with Russia and China, marking a massive win for us [the U.S.] and Europe,” a senior legal source who works closely with the U.S. Treasury Department exclusively told OilPrice.com last week. “Stay tuned – there’ll be more of this to come,” he added.

The significance of this sea-change in Iraq’s geopolitical leanings can barely be overstated. Following the increasing perception among the Iraqi people that the U.S. had overstayed its welcome after it removed Saddam Hussein as leader in 2003, Russia and China – in that order – looked to boost their influence across the country for three key reasons. First, it offers a huge repository of oil at the world’s joint lowest average lifting cost of $2-4 per barrel, together with large quantities of associated and non-associated gas. Second, it occupies the geographical heart of the region, lying west of Iran, north of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, east of Jordan and Syria (with its long Mediterranean coastline offering access to further critical sea routes), and south of Turkey (affording an entry into the European continent). And third, it is a key member of the ‘Shia Crescent of Power’ geopolitical arc that stretches from Iran through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, where Shia communities and Iran-backed groups exert significant influence over regional politics, economics, and security. In short, if you are a global superpower or wannabe, Iraq is where you need to be.

Collateral Damage?

47 Art Of The Deal There Goes The Narrative 28 Comments

Needless prosecution of a victimless crime, or a case of “the law is the law“?

The administration’s sudden expansion of immigration arrests in Chicago meant Guzmán was in the government’s custody for about 34 hours. She was kept in a holding facility that was intended to house people for only a small fraction of that time… Even though she was still trying to produce breast milk for her daughter, Guzmán had limited access to food and water at the Broadview Processing Center and was never provided a breast pump. She said she was never assessed by a medical professional while in the government’s custody. Guzmán was left to manage the pain of her C-section recovery as well as her Type 1 diabetes with the supplies she had in her backpack at the time of her arrest.

 

Y2Kyoto: News They Can’t Use

There Goes The Narrative Y2Kyoto 10 Comments

Roger Pielke Jr.

Some huge news dropped today that will reverberate through climate science and policy. Nature has finally retracted “The Economic Commitment of Climate Change,” by Kotz et al. (KLW24), more than 18 months after first learning that the paper was fatally flawed, with the authors acknowledging that its errors are “too substantial” for a correction.

It is not just the retraction that matters — that’s long overdue — but the reaction to the retraction, which indicates that while the old ways still have a grip on the climate discussion, things may be changing for the better.

Back in August, I explained the growing scandal around KLW24: It wasn’t just a fatally flawed paper, but a flawed paper that had taken on outsized influence in climate advocacy and policy.

Circling The Drain

Gaming Gradually Then Suddenly It's Probably Nothing There Goes The Narrative 9 Comments

The mainstream financial media is subtly acknowledging that a lot of the price action in Bitcoin was fueled by leverage. We seem to be in the process of finding out how leveraged bets on a rising asset price work in reverse. Hint: they don’t work very well.

Bitcoin, which was soaring around $125,000 in October, dropped below $86,000. That’s down roughly 7% from a day earlier.

Strategy, the company that used to be known as MicroStrategy and now raises money just to buy bitcoin, lost 10.3%. It said that it raised a fund of $1.44 billion in U.S. dollars, not in bitcoin, by selling stock to help pay for its dividends on preferred shares and interest on its debt.

Furry Friends

Insufferable Twits There Goes The Narrative 23 Comments

I had been told years ago that if you were hiking with at least six people, bears would not bother you. It seems some bears didn’t get that memo or the other one regarding pepper spray. Too bad someone in the group didn’t have a gun on them, but that promotes disharmony with nature. A ban on hunting these animals couldn’t possibly have led to them losing their fear of humans either. And so on.

“It’s the ecosystem being out of balance that means grizzly bears are getting desperate,” he said, citing recent clear-cutting and forest fires pushing bears from of their habitat.

He dismissed suggestions that bears may be more aggressive before hibernation because the animals do not look to human prey. Scapillati said he worried about pro-hunting groups using the attack to spread inaccurate information about bears being aggressive. “That’s so inappropriate at a time when we’re focused on holding the children and families and all those affected in our hearts and focused on them,” Scapillati said.

This Land is Our Land

There Goes The Narrative We Are All Treaty People 9 Comments

Read the whole thing.

National Post- Canada wasn’t ‘stolen’ from Indigenous people

In short, the Americas were settled in waves from Asia. Everyone alive today is descended from settlers. The latest “Indigenous” settlers arrived barely ahead of the first European settlers, the Vikings, who settled in Greenland and Newfoundland, and of Christopher Columbus, who started Spanish settlement in the Caribbean.

Fakery First

Social Disease There Goes The Narrative 13 Comments

@MichaelFKane

Seeing the sheer number of people on the ‘American online right’ exposed to be foreigners is frankly relieving. Given many of these accounts have been actively stoking the flames of the little civil war we are having on the right at the moment, their locations being posted is huge.

Go into any hot topic political conversation on twitter right now. Go into the comments. Find the most inflammatory comments pushing the hardest and the strongest on the most radical position.

You’ll find them filled with people from Europe. India. The Philippines. The Middle East. Australia. Nigeria. Malaysia.

See also: Israel derangement syndrome

The account behind the Fairy Creek blockade in British Columbia is in the US...

The fakery is everywhere.

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