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We Are In The Midst Of A Rupture, Not A Transition (Elections Have Consequences)

Posted in Economics, General Comments, Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 21, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Thank you very much, Larry.  I’m going to start in French, and then I’ll switch back to English.
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, get along to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety.
Well, it won’t.  So what are our options?
In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel, later president, wrote an essay called “The Power of the Powerless,” and in it he asked a simple question:  how did the communist system sustain itself?
And his answer began with a greengrocer.
Every morning, the shopkeeper places a sign in his window:  “Workers of the world unite.”  He doesn’t believe in it.  No one does.  But he places the sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along.  And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists — not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.
Havel called this living within a lie.  The system’s power comes not from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true.  And its fragility comes from the same source.  When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack.
Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.
For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order.  We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability.  And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.
We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that international law applied with varied rigour, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
This fiction was useful, and American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
So we placed the sign in the window.  We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.
This bargain no longer works.
Let me be direct.  We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration.  But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.
You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.
The multilateral institutions on which the middle powers have relied — the WTO, the UN, the COP, the very architecture of collective problem-solving — are under threat.  As a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions that they must develop greater strategic autonomy in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains.  And this impulse is understandable.
A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself or defend itself has few options.  When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.
But let’s be clear-eyed about where this leads.  A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable.
And there’s another truth:  if great powers abandon even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from transactionalism will become harder to replicate.
Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships.  Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty.  They’ll buy insurance, increase options in order to rebuild sovereignty — sovereignty that was once grounded in rules but will increasingly be anchored in the ability to withstand pressure.
This room knows this is classic risk management.  Risk management comes at a price, but that cost of strategic autonomy, of sovereignty, can also be shared.  Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortresses.  Shared standards reduce fragmentations.  Complementarities are positive sum.
The question for middle powers like Canada is not whether to adapt to the new reality — we must.
The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls, or whether we can do something more ambitious.
Now, Canada was amongst the first to hear the wake-up call, leading us to fundamentally shift our strategic posture.  Canadians know that our old, comfortable assumptions that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security, that assumption is no longer valid.  And our new approach rests on what Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland, has termed value-based realism.
Or, to put it another way, we aim to be both principled and pragmatic.  Principled in our commitment to fundamental values, sovereignty, territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force except when consistent with the UN Charter and respect for human rights.
And pragmatic in recognizing that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner will share all of our values.
So we’re engaging broadly, strategically, with open eyes.  We actively take on the world as it is, not wait around for a world we wish to be.
We are calibrating our relationships so their depth reflects our values, and we’re prioritizing broad engagement to maximize our influence, given the fluidity of the world at the moment, the risks that this poses and the stakes for what comes next.
And we are no longer just relying on the strength of our values, but also the value of our strength.
We are building that strength at home.  Since my government took office, we have cut taxes on incomes, on capital gains and business investment.  We have removed all federal barriers to interprovincial trade.  We are fast-tracking $1 trillion of investments in energy, AI, critical minerals, new trade corridors and beyond.  We’re doubling our defence spending by the end of this decade, and we’re doing so in ways that build our domestic industries.  And we are rapidly diversifying abroad.
We’ve agreed to 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.
In 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 Eight, 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.
Canada strongly opposes tariffs over Greenland and calls for focused talks to achieve our shared objectives of security and prosperity in the Arctic.
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 buyer’s clubs anchored in the G7 so the world can diversify away from concentrated supply.  And on AI, we’re co-operating with like-minded democracies to ensure that we won’t ultimately be forced to choose between hegemons and hyperscalers.
This is not naïve multilateralism, nor is it relying on their institutions.  It’s building coalitions that work issue by issue with partners who share enough common ground to act together.  In some cases, this will be the vast majority of nations.  What it’s doing is creating a dense web of connections across trade, investment, culture on which we can draw for future challenges and opportunities.
Our view is the middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.
But I’d also say that great powers can afford, for now, to go it alone.  They have the market size, the military capacity and the leverage to dictate terms.  Middle powers do not.  But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness.  We accept what’s offered.  We compete with each other to be the most accommodating.
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 combine to create a third path with impact.  We shouldn’t allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity and rules will remain strong if we choose to wield it together.
Which brings me back to Havel.  What does it mean for middle powers to live the truth?
First, it means naming reality.  Stop invoking rules-based international order as though it still functions as advertised.  Call it what it is:  a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion.
It means acting consistently, applying the same standards to allies and rivals.  When middle powers criticize economic intimidation from one direction but stay silent when it comes from another, we are keeping the sign in the window.
It means building what we claim to believe in, rather than waiting for the old order to be restored.  It means creating institutions and agreements that function as described, and it means reducing the leverage that enables coercion.
That’s building a strong domestic economy.  It should be every government’s immediate priority.
And diversification internationally is not just economic prudence;  it’s a material foundation for honest foreign policy, because countries earn the right to principled stands by reducing their vulnerability to retaliation.
So, Canada.  Canada has what the world wants.  We are an energy superpower.  We hold vast reserves of critical minerals.  We have the most educated population in the world.  Our pension funds are amongst the world’s largest and most sophisticated investors.  In other words, we have capital talent.  We also have a government with immense fiscal capacity to act decisively.  And we have the values to which many others aspire.
Canada is a pluralistic society that works.  Our public square is loud, diverse and free.  Canadians remain committed to sustainability.  We are a stable and reliable partner in a world that is anything but, a partner that builds and values relationships for the long term.
And we have something else:  we have a recognition of what’s happening and determination to act accordingly.  We understand that this rupture calls for more than adaptation.  It calls for honesty about the world as it is.
We are taking a sign out of the window.
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 the most to gain from genuine co-operation.
The powerful have their power.  But we have something too:  the capacity to stop pretending, to name realities, 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.
Thank you very much.
    —     Mark Carney
Prime Minister of Canada
Special Address delivered at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 20 January 2026 in Davos, Switzerland
[Text versions of this speech are freely available from multiple news and government sites on the web.  ALL emphasis has been added by me and does not appear in the original text version I copied.  I will, of course, remove or modify this post if requested by P.M. Carney, his staff or the Canadian government.    —    kmab]
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Click here (21 January) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Refusing To Die

Posted in General Comments, Movie Review, Movies, Reviews, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 11, 2025| Leave a Comment »

“Sisu” (2022) — movie review
Today’s review is for the brutal, mythic WWII action thriller:  “Sisu” (2022), starring Jorma Tommila as Aatami Korpi — a solitary Finnish prospector whose quiet excavation of gold is interrupted by a retreating Nazi death squad, Aksel Hennie plays Bruno Helldorf, the SS commander whose cruelty is matched only by his underestimation of Korpi, Jack Doolan and Onni Tommila appear as Wolf and Schütze, two Nazi subordinates who learn — too late — that their prey is not a man to be hunted, and Mimosa Willamo plays Aino, a captured Finnish woman whose resilience becomes a mirror to Korpi’s own.
Background:  I came to “Sisu” with the expectation of a ultra-violent WWII commando based war movie – via a YouTube “Short”.  Post viewing, but in preparation for this review, I found out it had won multiple awards at in Europe — including Best Picture, Best Actor (Tommila), Best Cinematography (Kjell Lagerroos), and Best Original Music (Juri Seppä and Tuomas Wäinölä).  It also won the Saturn Award for Best International Film.  But, from the “Short”, I didn’t expect a film that felt like “John Wick” (action-driven spectacle) by way of Tarkovsky (a slow, contemplative, philosophical style) — a blood-soaked fairy tale with the pacing of a western and the soul of a national myth.  “Sisu” supposedly doesn’t translate directly into English (or German), but it roughly means a kind of stoic, unyielding determination.  This film is a cinematic representation of that word — personified.
Plot:  Set in 1944, during the final days of WWII, the film opens with Aatami Korpi panning for gold in the remote Finnish wilderness.  He finds it — a motherlode — and begins his journey to cash it in.  But the land is crawling with Nazis conducting a scorched-earth retreat.  When they try to steal his gold and leave him for dead, Korpi reveals himself not as a miner, but as a former commando — a one-man death squad with nothing left to lose.  What follows is a series of escalating confrontations:  knives, land mines, tanks, and underwater breath-holding that borders on supernatural.  Korpi survives hangings, stabbings, shootings, and even a plane crash — all with grim silence and a dogged refusal to die.  The film builds toward a final showdown in a bombed-out town, where Korpi reclaims his gold and his dignity, leaving a trail of Nazi corpses in his wake.
So, is this movie any good?  The acting?  The filming / FX?  Any problems?  And, did I enjoy the film?  Short answers:  Yes;  visceral;  stunning;  a few;  yes — with a grin.
Any good?  Yes.  “Sisu” is a lean, mean, genre-bending war film that trades talk and narration for execution (and I DO mean “execution”).  It’s not a history lesson — it’s a myth.  The film’s structure is episodic, almost like chapters in a graphic novel or watching a Tarantino directed movie.  Each set piece escalates the stakes, and each survival feels (mostly) earned.  It’s NOT realistic — but it’s not trying to be.  It’s a cinematic embodiment of Finnish grit.
Acting:  Jorma Tommila is extraordinary.  His Aatami Korpi speaks maybe a dozen words in the entire film, but his performance is all physicality, presence, and haunted resolve.  He’s not just tough — he’s elemental.  Aksel Hennie plays Helldorf with sneering arrogance, and his unraveling is extremely satisfying to watch.  Jack Doolan and Onni Tommila (yes, Jorma’s real-life son) add texture to the Nazi ranks — cowardice, cruelty, and confusion.  Mimosa Willamo’s Aino is fierce and grounded, offering a counterpoint to Korpi’s mythic silence.  The cast is tight, and every performance serves the film’s tone.
Filming / FX:   The cinematography is stunning — wide shots of desolate tundra, close-ups of blood and grit, and a color palette that shifts from gold to ash.  The FX are practical and brutal:  exploding heads, impalements, and one underwater sequence that defies logic but not emotion.  The film’s violence is stylized but never cartoonish.  It’s extremely gory, yes — but it’s also (strangely, almost) beautiful.  The score works to add both tension and some melancholy.
Problems:  A few.  The film’s pacing is uneven — the first act is slow, the middle relentless, and the ending abrupt.  The lack of dialogue (by Korpi) may frustrate viewers looking for character development.  Some of Korpi’s survivals stretch credibility (and how!) — especially the underwater escape and the plane crash finale.  But these moments are part of the film’s mythic tone.  “Sisu” isn’t asking you to believe — it’s asking you to experience.
Did I enjoy the film?  Yes!  “Sisu” is a film that knows exactly what it is:  a blood-soaked fable about endurance, revenge, and national identity.  It’s not subtle, but it is intense and intentful.  Watching Korpi drag himself across the tundra, gold in hand and dog at heel, is strangely moving.  It’s a film that made me laugh, wince, and cheer — often in the same scene.
Final Recommendation:  Strong recommendation (with the qualification of being extremely violent).  “Sisu” is not a traditional war film — it’s a cinematic folk tale with bullets and landmines.  The cast is lean, the dialogue minimal, and the violence — operatic.  It won multiple awards at Sitges (European) and the Saturns (American Sci-Fi / horror), and while it didn’t receive any Academy Awards, it carved out a place in cult cinema.  If you’re looking for realism, look elsewhere.  But if you want to see what happens when a man becomes a legend — and a legend becomes a cinematic force — watch “Sisu.”  It’s golden.
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Click here (11 November) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Raking – #PresidentIdiot Proposes Full Employment For California

Posted in Economics, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 19, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Global climate change is one of the causes for the current drought in California and across much of the mid-west and southwestern United States.  Despite what #IncompetentDonald says, that’s just the unfortunate truth.  The thing about science AND reality is they don’t care whether you believe in them or not OR what political party you support.
On visiting the California Camp (Butte County) fire area and viewing the town of Paradise which was destroyed by the recent fire, #PresidentIdiot said we can deal with forest fires the way they do in Finland by raking the underbrush.  If only we had better land management.  Setting aside the fact this is a lie – the Finn’s don’t manage their forests by raking brush and that their President never told Trump they did, as #PresidentTrumpIsALiar claims, let’s take a look at what this “proposal” might cost (this is just a scribbling on the napkin guesstimate):
First I Google’d how many acres of forest land there are in California (Federal land only):   19,000,000 acres
Next I Google’d how long it takes to clear 1 acre of land of leaves – (in a level garden, using a blower and machine lawn-mowers / cutters):  3 men x 3 hours = 9 man-hours per acre.  This includes bagging and taking the leaves to the dump.  This was a private sector estimate at $40 per hour per person and with supervisory overhead (profit margin), a minimum of $500 bid for the job.  Please, note the bids I found are for back yards and gardens.  The quotes are not for brush, hills, mountains and dense forests which may either have no roads or be too steep / rugged to have road access.  In other words, you’ll have to hike there just to use that rake of yours.
That’s a rough $9.5 BILLION dollars ($500 x 19,000,000 acres)!!!  But, of course, we all KNOW that the private sector is MUCH more efficient than the government, so we can assume this is an accurate estimate and a lower cost than if the job were done by Federal workers.
So, how many workers is that?
19,000,000 acres * 9 man-hours per acre = 171,000,000 man-hours
171,000,000 man-hours / 2,000 man-hours per year of work = 85,500 man-years of raking.  (The good news is you don’t need a high school diploma to use a rake.)  Talk about full employment and a Civilian Conservation Corps!!!!
The most level management organization in the world is (wait for it…) the Catholic Church which has ONLY four levels between the parish priest and the Pope (Monsignor (parish), Bishop (diocese), Cardinal (region), Pope (Church) ).  If we adopt the standard rule of seven for supervisor efficiency (except at the bottom of the table) we are left with also hiring 1 supervisor per 36 rakers (2,375 supervisors), 1 manager per 7 supervisors (340 mngrs),  1 senior manager per 7 managers (49 senior mngrs), 1 executive per 7 senior mngrs (7 execs), and 1 “Head of Raking for California”.   Yes, I know that’s 5 levels not 4 (like the Church), but the numbers are the numbers and we don’t have God to routinely make miracles for us.
So, that’s an extra 2,772 folks who will be on staff but not raking.  Now, obviously, these folks are going to make a lot more than the $40 the private sector was going to charge for a “raker”, but let’s assume it’s ONLY $50 / hour.  The cost of this management will be:  $277,200,000.
So, President Trump’s “idea / proposal” to rake the underbrush to prevent future fires will need to hire / use about 88 THOUSAND people and cost  somewhere around $9.8 BILLION per year.  And that’s ONLY for Federal land in California.  And, let’s not get into who’s going to drive the trucks moving the undergrowth to the dump and / or where we’re going to find landfills large enough to hold all of the compost.  Oh, don’t forget the cost of the rakes and the plastic bags to hold the undergrowth during transport.  It boggles the mind…
This is the kind of ridiculous suggestion you get from a man who is so stupid he believes he is smarter than “his” generals (we are still in the Middle East and Afghanistan), “his” economists (we still have no tax relief for the middle class), “his” political advisors (Republicans just lost the House in the mid-terms), and “his” intelligence services (Russian had nothing to do with #DumbDonald getting elected), let alone “who knew healthcare was so complicated” (we still have no Republican proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act).  Basically, this is what happens when you elect an incompetent con-man / grifter to be President.
And, no, I don’t seriously believe any company in the private sector is going to pay someone $40 / hour to rake / blow leaves.  I do believe that is what they will charge you, though.  Okay, enough scribbling…
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Click here (19 November) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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