While Canuck minister plays SJW, USA and Mexico near NAFTA deal

Canadian investors and businesspeople are chewing their nails, waiting and hoping for their federal government (Just In Trudeau, Prop.) to get serious about reaching a deal with the Paranoid States of America (and maybe Mexico) to renew the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The economies of the Land of the Somewhat Free and the Great No-longer-white North are so intertwined that a reversion to the status quo ante would be disastrous for Canada, less so for the USA. Canucks are worried about the possible failure of negotiations, Americans... not so much.

Chrystia Freeland, Canada's silver-spoon liberal Minister of Global Affairs [sic], announced as negotiations got under way that her Liberal government's priorities would be: aboriginal rights, gender equity and climate change. The American negotiators replied, "Huh? Don't you want to talk business?" Months of dithering have passed with Canada and the USA failing to even get on the same page, while the Mexicans look on in puzzlement.

So tired are the Americans of having to deal with the fragrant Ms Freeland and her SJW agenda that they resorted to holding "lower level" meetings without her. See "Canuck foreign minister Freeland skips 5th round of NAFTA talks", WWW 16/11/17. Mr Socks responded by putting former Conservative Prime Minister Lyin' Brian Mulroney and cabinet minister Rona Ambrose on the negotiating team, but everyone knew that was just for show since Ms Freeland won't talk to anybody who doesn't agree with the liberal orthodoxy. "These people are impossible to deal with! I'm going home!" was how she responded to questions from the Belgian government during negotiations for a Canada-European Union trade deal.

The Americans' next ploy was to let it be known, through "back channels", that they would be happy to sit down with someone more business-minded. That led to a clandestine visit to the White House by Stephen "Call Me Steve" Harper, the Conservative who Junior defeated in October of 2015. See "Mysterious meeting between WH bigshots and former Canadian PM", WWW 28/6/18. Unfortunately, word of the visit leaked out, and the Liberals can't afford politically to follow up on any progress which might have been made.

The state of play at the moment is that, absent the distraction of Ms Freeland and her SJW demands, the USA and Mexico are having productive talks, getting down to where the rubber meets the road. Reports this week suggest they're getting close to a deal, including an agreement on the contentious auto sector. That a deal is imminent was confirmed by none other than POTUS himself, who sent out this tweet on Friday.

Because of tariffs and trade barriers, President Trump said, "Canada must wait." Bad news for the Canucks, but not unexpected.  Two days earlier, Breitbart News reported that former New York Stock Exchange President Tom Farley said expected Trump to reach a trade deal with Mexico before the midterm elections. "Likely not Canada. China will be the bogeyman," he said. "You’ll see China continue to struggle. And then the idea will be can we get a big trade deal prior to [Donald Trump's] next election" in 2020.

Before the NAFTA negotiations got underway, many predicted that President Trump would have the hardest time working with Mexico because of his promise to erect a wall along the border. Instead, American negotiators have discovered they have a lot of common ground with the Mexicans, and talks have gone well. The stumbling block in renegotiating a tripartite NAFTA is... wait for it... Canada!

War begets terrorism begets war begets terrorism... etc

Note from Ed.: Walt began this piece around lunchtime yesterday, then got distracted by the terrorist attack -- for that's what it was -- in California. I asked him to get up early today and finish this, by which time the connection between these thoughts and the San Bernardino massacre should be clear. And so it is.

Three announcements were made today [Wednesday] in Washington, Ottawa and London, all connected more or less directly with the jihadist attacks in Paris. French President François Hollande has declared that his country is at war with ISIS, and has urged his NATO allies to do more to help.

In Washington, it was announced that the Paranoid States of America would be sending a few dozen more "advisers" to help the good guys fighting ISIS in Syria. Their problem, of course, will be identifying the good guys -- separating the sheep from the goats, as it were. Nevertheless, dozens of American troops will be on the ground in Syria within a few days. Then hundreds. Then thousands. (Walt's lifetime pct .985)

In Ottawa, Rona Ambrose, the fragrant new (interim) leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, has urged Canada's hot new Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, to reverse his decision to withdraw Canada's CF-18 fighter-bombers -- all six (6) of them -- from the mission against ISIS in Syria. Ms Ambrose told her caucus that there are times when you have to "go out to meet the enemy".

In London, British Prime Minister David Cameron won (on the second try) the support of the House of Commons for Britain to join the "coalition". This was after an intense debate of over ten hours, just before which Mr. Cameron is said to have accused those who didn't support British intervention in Syria of being "terrorist sympathizers".

So... the terrorist attacks in Paris lead to an increase in the West's involvement in the Muslim civil war in the Middle East. The Arabs, unsurprisingly, aren't altogether pleased to have the "crusaders" "helping out", while dropping death from the air on thousands of innocent civilians and generally laying waste to the already barren countryside.

Some of the militant Islamists are so displeased that they decide to go and meet their enemies -- that would be US -- on their (OUR) soil -- Madrid, London, Paris... or San Bernardino. And so the wheel of death turns, becoming ever more vicious, ever more unstoppable.

In A War Against Truth: An Intimate Account of the Invasion of Iraq (Raincoast Books 2004), Paul William Roberts writes: If our response to terrorism is merely to terrorize other people in return, we are not in fact fighting terrorism at all, we are creating yet more terrorism for the future.

In 1997, the American Defense Science Board reported that "historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States." Given that "involvement" is a standard euphemism for covert or overt military intervention, what you have there is the real explanation for terrorist acts.

Indeed. That brings us to what happened in San Bernardino, which is my topic for the next post.

Canada to send out for Chinks?

Walt has it on good authority [the so-called National Post, actually. Ed.] that Canada's quasi-Conservative government is actually getting serious about finding an alternative to the sorely troubled F-35 fighter jet by asking rival manufacturers for information about the cost and availability of their planes.

Rona Ambrose, currently being rehabilitated as minister responsible for defence procurement -- could we call her the chief procuress? -- is going to ask Boeing, makers of something called the Superhornet, and the consortium that makes the Eurofighter Typhoon, what their prices are and how soon they can have something painted with maple leafs... Errr, maple leaves. Whichever is red, not blue.

Just looking, you understand. The pricing and availability information request falls short of a formal tender but government sources said the "market analysis" will send a signal to voters and industry that it is taking seriously the Auditor-General's spring report that was heavily critical of the F-35 procurement process.

Today Walt can reveal that real anger seethes inside the icy exterior of Canadian Prime Minister Harpoon. In the middle of the night, a Canuck agent -- we won't even give his number -- has slipped under Walt's cabin door a brown envelope marked "Top Secret Restricted & Confidential". Here's what was inside.