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Open in TheBrain

Mark Carney PM

PRIMARY 8 26 EZ

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MERRI OK

trump tariff BS pUshed him to do deal w/ china

cda troops to Greenland?

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TALKS W TURKEY AND ---

AN 10 26

Trump ambassador telegraphs plan to blame Canada for election losses

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AN 9 26

Earthquake as Canada negotiates with the EU to join as associate member

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TRUMP SAID EXXON AND CHEVRON IN VENEZ?

9 26

President Donald Trump's ongoing trade war with Canada just took a major turn — and it was not in the president's interests.

"In Texas and New York, big oil and big money are placing their bets on the future of the energy industry," reported The Globe and Mail's Andrew Willis on Monday. "Major American oil companies and asset managers are lining up to invest in Canadian infrastructure. They seem to have missed U.S. President Donald Trump’s weekend Truth Social post declaring 'I don’t want Canadian anything.'"

Describing the companies in question as ExxonMobil Holdings Corp., ConocoPhillips, KKR & Co. Inc. and Apollo Global Management Inc., The Globe and Mail added that they are also steering clear of Venezuela, which Trump set his sights on earlier this year.

"The American economy runs on Canadian energy," Willis pointed out. "Last year, the U.S. imported $160-billion of oil, gas and electricity from its northern neighbour. Mr. Trump’s attempt to position Venezuela as a counter to Canada’s strongest suits is a bad bluff."

He continued, "The President’s anti-Canada policies are undermined by the actions of the largest U.S. oil companies and biggest asset managers. They are all investing in a robust long-term Canadian relationship. The larger lesson from Mr. Trump’s recent Truth Social postings on Venezuela and Canada is what they say about the President’s declining relevance."

This is not the first report to indicate that Trump's attempt to bully Canada into winning a trade war against the United States has spectacularly failed.

“As Carney prepared to walk away — a rare example of a foreign leader telling the president ‘enough’ — Trump was retreating on another trade front,” reported The Washington Post's David J. Lynch earlier in August. “On Friday, after insisting for more than a year that tariffs do not affect consumer prices, he lifted tariffs on beef imports, saying the move would lead to lower grocery prices.”

Lynch added, “The two developments, coupled with legal challenges to Trump’s tariffs, leave the president’s signature economic policy in a state of flux.”

Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade negotiator and currently senior vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute, also told the Post that Trump's Canada trade war has reached “a juncture where other countries may be very closely watching how this plays out as they also are becoming increasingly frustrated with the demands the U.S. is placing on them in these largely one-sided trade agreements.”

Trump is also failing on the PR front in his trade war against Canada, most recently in trying to retaliate against Canada by renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America.

"Throughout his political career, Trump’s signature skill has been to drive the conversation where he wanted it to go. He declares victory when things have not been won," wrote Slate's Ben Jacobs on Monday. "He ducks attribution with the rhetorical tic 'many people are saying,' frequently followed by things that people are decidedly not saying. He posts outrageous graphics on social media. And, of course, he renames things: Political opponents get nicknames, buildings get Trump’s name, and bodies of water get America’s name."

Yet that has not worked with the Lake Ontario gambit, indicating that Trump's "superpower" with PR may be waning.

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KLEIN ASTRA YT ETF 8 28 26

CARNEY INVITE BLK ROCK AND BLACKSTONE TO DEAL W TRUMP BS, BUT SORTA //?

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AN 8 26

TARIFF MIZZOU

At a time when the Republican Party is fighting for life under an unpopular president, an economic analysis reveals the red state of Missouri is looking at serious problems as President Donald Trump escalates his prolonged trade war between the U.S. and Canada, according to the Kansas City Star.

Trump may have tried to change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” in his latest sleight to Canada, but there’s nothing symbolic about the impact of the 50 percent tariffs the Trump administration levied on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. There’s also nothing symbolic about the pain of the retaliatory tariffs Canada plans to impose on roughly 700 American products beginning Sept. 8.

“The Kansas City metro area exports about $4 billion in goods to Canada annually, including vehicles, plastics, chemicals and agricultural products," according to a 2025 study by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

“Any variation in tariffs may be sensitive,” said Ariel Dvoskin, who studies trade theory and teaches economics at the University of Missouri Kansas City, “and the [50 percent] variation that we are talking about right now … would substantially affect the exports from KC.”

Dvoskin pointed out that a whopping 37 percent of Kansas City’s exported goods go to Canada, which puts this Trump-voting state in a nasty bullseye. “When you increase tariffs, of course, those who suffer first are workers because prices go up and their real wages go down," Dvoskin said.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce study identified Kansas City as one of the U.S. cities that would take the hardest hit in a trade war between the North American allies, with Kansas City the third-most vulnerable city in a prolonged trade dispute because of its dependence on Canadian demand.

The info was based on 2023 data, but Andrew DiCapua, the chamber’s principal economist and the study’s author, told the Star that the results still apply today.

“Kansas City really is at the center of this trade war,” DiCapua said. “ … It raises costs for businesses. I mean, someone needs to pay for this. Even if it’s not passed on to consumers right away, someone still needs to pay for the tariffs. So smaller businesses that rely on these supply chains are going to have to eat those costs.”

Frank Lenk, director of economic research at the Mid-America Regional Council, told the Star that Kansas City’s auto industry is among the clearest targets because vehicles are one of the region’s largest exports and much of that trade is tied to Canada. Lenk added that Trump’s trade war can also hike manufacturing costs for companies like Ford and General Motors because parts and materials move back and forth across the border before final assembly.

They can either absorb those costs and threaten their financial integrity and workers or pass the costs down to customers in a colossal wallop.

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THREAT 50% TARIFF ON WILDFIRES, USED ARR BOOZE ETC

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney incited a MAGA meltdown after pointing out that the United States shared responsibility for the climate change currently dumping wildfire smoke all over the upper U.S.

Nearly 900 wildfires were burning without control in the north, as of Friday, in the wake of an abnormally dry and hot summer. This led to air quality alerts throughout the northeast and the Midwest, with Chicago and Detroit having the worst air of any major cities in the world — and more US cities due for pollution further east over the next few days.

But Republicans, who are loathe to admit that climate change is real and regularly jumps borders, prefer to blame whatever nation is currently suffering out-of-control fires, whether they are blue US states or neighboring ally nations.

However, Carney, while speaking of the disaster to Canadian citizens, pointed out in French that “We need a contribution from the Americans in the fight against climate change ... climate change is everyone's responsibility, including the US.”

This sent MAGA into even more of a fury.

“Canada is a doomed state. Can’t wait until their total economic collapse, and have to ask the US to buy them,” ranted one critic on X.

“Nice deflection while hiding behind the con that is ‘climate change,’ railed another MAGA heckler — while ignoring the vanishing US glaciers in Glacier National Park. “Dude is inept as hell and has no clue about forest management.”

“This climate change is a hoax,” blasted another critic on X, in contradiction to the majority of science. “Even Bill Gates had to admit that we are not dying from climate change. Now that they need extra energy that renewables can't produce for their data centers … [C]limate change doesn't start over 100 separate fires.”

President Donald Trump himself blasted the PM later on Friday, while denying the fact that the US has regularly been plagued by raging fires as well as temperatures rise and regions get less, more sporadic rainfall.

“We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air, the quality of which is dangerous, and totally unacceptable!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “I will call the Prime Minister during the day to find out what they are going to do about it. The cost is incalculable! Canada has refused to engage in basic Forest Management and Debris Removal, knowing that such refusal will lead to exactly this result.”

Last year, Trump lobbed many of the same accusations at California as that state burned under historic flames, accusing state leaders of not raking forests of debris and not maxing out the Colorado River to wet its dry areas — despite competition with other thirsty western states for the same water source.

A few months previous, in 2024, Trump had threatened to withhold federal aid for fighting California wildfires at a California rally.

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7/8/26 AN

President Donald Trump is at the NATO summit in Turkey where things grew contentious when he dropped a "diplomatic bombshell" on Canada.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Justin Trudeau kept getting threatening phone calls from Trump before he was replaced by Mark Carney.

At one point in a call, Trump told Canada he would kill a 118-year-old agreement that set the border with the U.S. and its neighbor to the north on maps and on the ground.

The agreement came when Canada was still handled by the United Kingdom, and at the April 1908 Boundary Convention, it was the U.K. that signed the agreement, not Canada. But Trump didn't care, telling Trudeau, “I tear that up, and your whole country unravels.”

Trump seemed confused that the law established the border, but the reality is that a slew of other agreements and treaties set the border, including the Treaty of 1818 and the Oregon Treaty of 1846.

According to the Journal, "Over dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Trudeau’s envoys tried to dissuade Trump from absorbing their country. When one Trump aide pointed out Canada’s 41 million people would lean Democrat, the president came up with a neat solution: just split the northern neighbor into two states, one red, the other blue."

It's unclear how Trump would make that work, given that he has an approval rating in Canada of around 22 percent, according to a Pew Research Center survey.

When Carney took over, he asked for a review of Canada's dependency "on one particular country for its data storage, military hardware, payments processing and even food."

The report called it the first move for a country shifting the U.S. from an ally to a threat. It was a stark contrast to what NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte did, which is to encourage members that they had to do whatever it would take to keep the alliance together.

"In effect, a push to make Canada America’s 51st state had lighted a fuse of unintended consequences that would play out far beyond North America, as overseas allies asked themselves whether the U.S.-led alliance could truly last," the report said.

Carney's first visit as prime minister was not to the U.S. but to France, where he and President Emmanuel Macron discussed ways to dial down its dependency on the U.S.

"Canada had the critical minerals needed by France, whose state-backed tech firms were taking early steps into the U.S.-dominated spheres of AI and quantum computing. French diplomats joked that since Canada and Denmark share a land border on an uninhabited Arctic island off Greenland, that could make the North American country a legitimate candidate to gain fast-track membership in the EU. Carney laughed," the report said.

When Carney went to the U.K. next, they discussed how "they might band together if the U.S. left 'Five Eyes,'" the U.S.-led intelligence-sharing alliance made up of the U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. While that idea never gained traction, it was discussed with MI6.

While in the U.K. his requested report about a world without America was finished and he was able to share it with Kir Starmer’s office.

Starmer wanted to be cautious, insisting that they had to find a way to salvage the relationship between the West and America.

“We don’t have a relationship to keep!” Carney replied, according to the report.

Informal advisor and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner was advising Canada to "produce a video that might persuade the president that they were serious about border security. Trudeau’s government hired a film crew to capture two Black Hawk helicopters and a sniffer dog on patrol. Instead of placating Trump, it seemed to fuel his interest in revisiting the placement of the border."

Carney's team, by contrast, began reading clinical and psychological studies on "impulsivity" to better learn how to deal with Trump. They believed that Trump's 51st state idea was really about "price discovery," when he throws out an absurd idea to see how the financial markets will react.

Other aides thought it was more about Trump trying to kick Trudeau while his poll numbers were down.

Either way, Carney has looked for new ideas to deal with the volatility of the American leader while slowly reducing reliance on the U.S.

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CDA WILL JOIN EU? EVEN EUR ALT RT DISTANCE?

AN 4 26

Trump’s belligerent rhetoric toward America’s allies may please his domestic political base, but it is harming America’s international standing — perhaps permanently.

“Trump, for so many people, epitomizes the ugly American — somebody who is bumptious and vulgar and ignorant about foreign cultures,” former Time Magazine editor Rick Stengel said in a recent podcast appearance on The Bulwark with former Daily Beast editor-in-chief John Avlon. “So I think people sort of have come to the end of their patience with America.”

Avlon replied to Stengel by noting that polls found presidents like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who engaged in positive diplomatic relationships with other countries, were far more popular than the bellicose Trump. Indeed, Stengel noted that America’s foreign standing has “plummeted” during Trump’s two terms.

“It always seemed absurd to me when Trumpists would say that we need to be respected on the world stage, when you could see in the data that America was not respected — was held in worse regard when Trump was president, even than Chinese president-for-life Xi,” Avlon told Stengel. “So I wonder now with Iran, though — we seem to have crossed a Rubicon, because it was a war of choice, because our allies are not with us. And tell me about the downstream effect of that as you see it.”

Stengel added that, even though Joe Biden tried to reverse the damage to America’s reputation caused by Trump’s first term, America’s allies were not convinced that Biden would remain in power long enough to keep those policies in place. Trump’s reelection in 2024 confirmed their fears.

“This seesaw in presidential politics is something that people don't really understand,” Stengel told Avlon. “And then this Iran thing — by the way, what was probably most popular about Trump on the world stage was his sort of isolationism: that this isn't about America invading foreign countries and this world of endless wars, that America would retrench globally in terms of militaries but increase their presence globally in terms of trade and globalization. In some ways, it's the exact opposite. The alliances are also part of this idea of soft power, because — and I hate that phrase we used to use — we're not the world's policemen. We weren't the world's policemen, but we were the kind of foundation of the global world order, that people could trust America to abide by the rule of law, to be a pretty fairly honest broker. Not to say we wouldn't do bad things, but that is completely out the window.”

He concluded, “And the kind of ‘America First’ which has now actually caused it to get into a war is something that makes us much more isolated and much less popular, to an extraordinary extent.”

In February the New York Times reported that Trump’s imperialist rhetoric toward Denmark about acquiring Greenland and his conquest of Venezuela had convinced America’s European allies to decouple their most valuable financial and digital assets from American corporations. His tariffs have similarly prompted talk among Europeans of a permanent “divorce” from the US, with a senior European official telling Politico that “there is a shift in U.S. policy and in many ways it is permanent. Waiting it out is not a solution. What needs to be done is an orderly and coordinated movement to a new reality.”

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CARBON TAX? MCKITRICK BS

COMMENTARY: Carney’s Industrial Carbon Tax Comes With Real Cost to Canadians

1 week ago

Ross McKitrick

EnergyNow

Carney’s industrial carbon tax comes with real cost to Canadians

2 weeks ago

Ross McKitrick

Fraser Institute

STUDY: Estimated Impacts of a $170 Industrial Carbon Price in Alberta and Canada

2 weeks ago

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AN 3 26

Canada on Monday announced "landmark" new deals with India as it moves away from reliance on the U.S., per a report from The Daily Beast, as Donald Trump continued to alienate allies with his military strikes on Iran.

Per the report, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a major 10-year "strategic energy partnership as well as agreements on technology, critical minerals, space, defense and education." The partnership will also include a free trade deal by the end of the year as both countries, who are ostensibly key allies of the U.S., seek to avoid exposure to Trump's sweeping global tariffs. The deal is intended to generate as much as $50 billion in bilateral trade between Canada and India.

Spurred into action by the unprecedented political and economic hostility from the U.S. during Trump's second term, Canada has been seeking new partnerships with other nations. Carney is scheduled to visit with two other key U.S. allies, Australia and Japan, in the coming days. Speaking about the new deal with India, the Canadian prime minister touted just how much engagement with India has resulted from Trump's aggressive global trade moves, and celebrated the two nations "charting our own course for the future."

"There has been more engagement between the Canadian and Indian governments in the last year than there has been in more than two decades combined," Carney said. "This is not merely the renewal of a relationship, it is the expansion of a valued partnership, with new ambition, focus and foresight. A partnership between two confident countries, charting our own course for the future."

The announcement came three days into Trump's unpopular military operation against Iran, conducted in cooperation with Israel. Polls have recently found that more Americans were opposed to the idea of military action against the Middle Eastern nation than supported it, with allies close to Trump worried that he will turn off his own MAGA base by focusing on foreign conflicts that they have long opposed.

As Canada creates new partnerships overseas, allies have also begun to distance themselves from Trump's operation in Iran. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday said that the country would not be aiding the U.S. in the campaign, stating that his government "does not believe in regime change from the skies." Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said that the U.S. will not be allowed to use military bases in Spain to conduct operations in Iran, with the country's government condemning the strikes.

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AN 2 26

In the wee hours of Monday, January 19, US President Donald Trump sent a now-infamous text message to the prime minister of Denmark:

Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America... The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you!

Trump’s brief, belligerent message (full text and analysis _{here}_) underscores a stark reality: One man is causing an acceleration of civilizational collapse.

Only hours later, at the annual gathering of world political and financial leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a general sense of fear and dread enveloped the proceedings. Even Trump’s half-hearted announcement that he wouldn’t use force to acquire Greenland couldn’t lift the gloom. The most memorable speech was that of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who began by saying:

Today, I’ll talk about the rupture in the world order, the end of a nice story, and the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints... But let’s be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable...

Systems scientists have been warning for decades that the current growth-based world economic order is unsustainable, and that it will inevitably become smaller and more simplified during the remainder of the 21st century. This downsizing is likely to be messy and sometimes violent. Meanwhile, observers who focus on geopolitics have argued that the US, which built a global empire during the 20th century, is already showing signs of decline in several respects, and that China is poised to become the next global superpower, if only briefly (that is, until the viability of global superpowers is itself outworn).

What is surprising is that this unraveling of the old order is accelerating so suddenly—and doing so largely thanks to just one man. During the last couple of decades, experts on societal collapse discussed whether the “Great Unraveling” would be a slow erosion over decades or a fast disintegration over mere years. The latest evidence (including Trump’s Greenland text) tips the scales toward a faster collapse scenario.

Since this shift is being driven largely by Donald Trump, it’s natural to wonder whether international calm could be restored simply by shunting him aside. There is, after all, growing concern over Trump’s health. (His sleepiness during daytime, his slurred speech, and his frequent frustrated fumbling for the correct word—in his Davos speech he called Greenland “Iceland” four times—have raised questions about his fitness for the job). The US Constitution provides two methods for removing an unfit president: impeachment, and the invocation of the 25th Amendment. Few informed observers of the American political scene expect either of these remedies to be implemented soon. Even if they were, Trump’s actions in the past year have irrevocably undermined stability in the US and globally. If his second presidency were to end tomorrow, Trump likely will have had as decisive an influence on history as pivotal world leaders like Winston Churchill, FDR, Vladimir Lenin, Adolf Hitler, or Joseph Stalin.

In this article we’ll explore how and why the march toward collapse is hastening, and what this trend has to do with Trump’s failure to understand social power. We’ll also explore what individuals can do in response to increasing signs of societal instability.

Three Elements—and Three Tools—of Social Power

The conclusions about Trump and accelerating societal unraveling stated above are rooted in my studies of the nature of power (see my book Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival and its related limited-run _{podcast}_). Every large society, from ancient kingdoms to modern industrial empires, has had to master three elements of social power—i.e., the ability to get other people to do things. The essential problem for would-be leaders of large societies is to enlist the populace to fight wars, build pyramids (or other significant structures and institutions), and increase economic activity. But what motivates people? Typically, they respond to coercion, enticements, and persuasion. If these are the three elements of social power, then it follows that the three main tools of social power are weapons, money, and communication technologies. In the book I trace the development of these tools, and the social consequences of their progressive development and use.

In PowerI also point out that there are two basic types of social power—vertical and horizontal. Vertical power is top-down, exercised through threats and punishments: “You must do this, or else,” or “If you do this, I’ll give you that.” Horizontal power is mutual and cooperative: “We can do this together”; it arises through inspiration and negotiation. Democracies tend to rely more on horizontal social power, and autocracies more on vertical power; but durable large societies seem to demand both.

When we see the military of Canada (CANADA??!!) modeling war plans for inflicting maximum casualties on US troops in the event of an invasion, it’s fair to conclude that old alliances are coming unglued fast.

Trump seems reflexively to rely solely on vertical social power—the use of threats and bribes. With such means, he has taken control of the Republican Party, won the presidency twice, and dominated Congress to the point that it has become virtually inert. He has been successful largely because horizontal power relationships in the US have been under increasing strain during the last few decades for several reasons, notably fast-rising economic inequality. From one perspective, his achievements are remarkable. Trump seems to understand power better than any other leader on the national stage. But his understanding of power is one-dimensional.

Trump seems profoundly ignorant of, or indifferent to, horizontal power. He has squandered the goodwill of allies and needlessly created international enemies. Again, Carney at Davos:

The multilateral institutions on which the middle powers have relied—the WTO, the UN, the COP—the architecture, the very architecture of collective problem solving are under threat. And 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... Call it what it is—a system of intensifying great power rivalry, where the most powerful pursue their interests, using economic integration as coercion.

Even authoritarian nations, if they’re to outlive their leader, need buy-in from citizens and allies. Chinese citizens, for example, expect stability and predictability while rapid economic growth improves their economic prospects. They also know that they will face severe penalties if they speak out against the regime, and they (mostly) willingly comply. Americans, however, thanks to Trump’s poor understanding of power, can now expect much less stability and predictability amid economic stagnation or even reversal. And many will be increasingly unwilling to comply.

Vertical Power Alone Is Fragile

Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller recently told *CNN*’s Jake Tapper,

...[Y]ou can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world... that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.

Trump is not the first world leader to rely almost exclusively on vertical social power. History is replete with authoritarian regimes and tyrants. Here’s an excerpt from a 3,000-year-old cuneiform text from the Assyrian Empire:

I am Tiglath Pileser the powerful king, the supreme King of Lashanan; King of the four regions, King of all Kings, Lord of Lords, the supreme Monarch of all Monarchs, the illustrious chief who under the auspices of the Sun god, being armed with the scepter and girt with the girdle of power over mankind, rules over all the people of Bel; the mighty Prince whose praise is blazoned forth among the Kings...

Pileser sounds positively Trumpian.

:{:{But vertical social power, on its own, often tends to lead to revolution, coup d-état, assassination, or war. Some historical authoritarian dynasties lasted centuries (China offers several examples}:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynasties_of_China

:{:{ However, the lifetime of many modern authoritarian regimes has been brief (for example, }Pol Pot{ ruled Cambodia for only four years). Concentrating the power of the state in one man often makes the glue that holds the nation together more brittle. What does the future hold for Russia after Putin? Why is the post-Gaddafi regime in Libya so frail?}:

Strongmen tend to leave power vacuums in their wake, along with weakened social institutions. The fall of a strongman doesn’t always make way for a vibrant democracy; more often, it leads to chaos and a string of other short-term strongmen. In the case of Trump, the strongman is already old and (in }many observers’{ opinions) infirm. He’s }_{not overwhelmingly popular, and his likely successors are even less so. The inevitable end of Trump’s rule, whether it occurs in days or years, will leave the US far more polarized and unruly than it was in 2016 when he was first elected.}:}:

Internationally, the US system of alliances that was patiently built over seven decades has not adapted well to Trump’s style of threats and bullying. When we see the military of Canada (CANADA??!!) modeling war plans for inflicting maximum casualties on US troops in the event of an invasion, it’s fair to conclude that old alliances are coming unglued fast. And that means global peril for both peace and trade. Trump is not a solely American problem.

Power Tools as Engines of Destruction

In Donald Trump’s hands, the perennial tools of power are becoming engines of destruction.

The administration has attacked mainstream news outlets that have been critical of it, sometimes employing the government’s regulatory powers as a cudgel. Trump’s false claims are so frequent that professional fact-checkers are employed by mainstream print and broadcast news organizations solely to spot, count, and refute them. Meanwhile, through a combination of verbal threats and funding cuts, the Trump administration is assaulting science, medicine, culture, and education. For example, the administration no longer gathers or publishes information about climate change, including both raw data and scientific research.}:

What to Do?

As I explained at some length in a recent article (which includes lots of resources and advice), local action to build community resilience is the antidote to national and global unraveling. Notice the persistent bonds of horizontal power holding your community together and engage in activities that build social ties. Strengthen local institutions, from credit unions to food co-ops. Identify and participate in international networks of trust and mutual aid, such as the Global Democracy Coalition. And learn from people in other parts of the world who have lived through authoritarian takeovers or successfully opposed them.

Build community resilience wherever you are. My organization, Post Carbon Institute, has produced books, articles, reports, and podcasts—as well as webinars and an online course—to help, and there are other organizations working along complementary lines. Our friends at Shareable have developed a fantastic set of guides (_{Mutual Aid 101}_) for anyone interested in starting a mutual aid initiative in their own community.

Collapse is accelerating. So must our efforts to build personal and community resilience. Don’t cower in front of your screen. Get out and join with others in projects to make your town stronger and more socially and environmentally sustainable.

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AN 1 26

A small contingent of an oil-rich province in Canada that desperately wants to join the United States met with President Donald Trump's administration.

The Financial Times reported on Thursday that Trump aides met with the Alberta Prosperity Project, which is a group of far-right separatists who want to leave Canada. Since last April, Trump's State Department officials have met with the group at least three times in Washington, the report said.

"They are seeking another meeting next month with state and Treasury officials to ask for a $500 billion credit facility to help bankroll the province if an independence referendum — yet to be called — is passed," said the report.

According to the group's attorney, Jeff Rath, who was at the meetings, “The US is extremely enthusiastic about a free and independent Alberta."

He went on to brag that he has a better relationship with the Trump administration than Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney who hammered Trump in a speech at the World Economic Forum.

The State Department downplayed the multiple meetings however, saying, “The department regularly meets with civil society types. As is typical in routine meetings such as these, no commitments were made.”

The White House echoed the statement, adding that there was no commitment of financial support.

Neither Treasury secretary Scott Bessent nor anyone at the Treasury Department knew anything about a "credit facility proposal," said a person familiar when talking to FT. They said they have no intention of engaging.

Canadian conservatives, however, view the group as people who are only looking for attention.

Carlo Dade, at the Canada West Foundation, “The Americans are more than happy to continue to play Canadians off each other."

Indeed, Bessent commented to a white supremacist podcaster that Alberta is a "natural partner" for the U.S. to make given that the province has so much oil.

“The Albertans are very independent people,” the secretary said. “[There is a] rumour that they may have a referendum on whether they want to stay in Canada or not.”

However, Ipsos polling shows that only 3 in 10 residents in Alberta and Quebec would vote to secede from Canada. Still, the separatists are gathering signatures for a petition to deliver to the legislature.

FT added that it's part of deteriorating diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Canada.

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an 1 26

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is calling out a top official in President Donald Trump's administration and dismissing the claim that he had walked back some of his incendiary Davos speech in a phone call with the president, according to The New Republic.

During a Monday evening appearance on Fox News, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed that Carney and Trump had spoken over the phone earlier in the day, and that the prime minister had been "very aggressively walking back some of the unfortunate remarks he made at Davos." This came as the president had been ramping up tariff threats against Canada in the wake of Carney's head-turning speech.

In an address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Carney argued that the era of American hegemony over the world order was at an end, owing to Trump's antagonistic treatment of allies since returning to the White House and his demand to take over Greenland from Denmark. He further argued that the middle power nations of the world must now band together to pursue their goals, rather than counting on the backing of the U.S.

The speech instantly became a hot-button topic, with a recent New York Times Opinion headline from Ezra Klein proclaiming it as the "most important foreign policy speech in years." It seemed to ruffle Trump's feathers as well, as he later went off on Canada in his own Davos speech, suggesting that Canada ought to be "grateful” for the “freebies" it gets from the U.S. and claiming that "Canada lives because of the United States."

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Carney rebuked Bessent for mischaracterizing his phone call with the phone call with the president. While the prime minister called the conversation a positive one, he also stressed that he did not back down from the points made in his speech.

"To be absolutely clear, and I said this to the president, I meant what I said in Davos," Carney said. "It was clear it was a broader set of issues that Canada was the first country to understand the change in U.S. trade policy that he had initiated. And we’re responding to that."

"We had a very good conversation on a wide range of subjects, ranging from the situation in Ukraine, in Venezuela, Arctic security," he added. "We discussed as well what Canada is doing, positively, and this is the context of our discussion, what Canada is doing positively to build new partnerships around the world."

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AN 1 26

President Donald Trump is proving to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney — and to the world — why other leaders may want nothing to do with his controversial statements, a New York Times columnist argued Sunday.

Columnist Ezra Klein wrote that America’s president now looks less like a world leader and more like a sulking hegemon.

“Everything Trump has done over the last week has made him look tawdry, addled and small,” Klein said.

Trump recently disinvited Canada from his so‑called “Board of Peace,” which he claims will be responsible for rebuilding Gaza. The invitation was withdrawn after Carney publicly said he had no role in the group. Most of Europe has also rejected Trump’s offer to join the “board.”

Klein wrote that Carney’s knack for “assessing [Trump’s] transactionalism” is what landed him on the president’s list of adversaries.

Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week accomplished several things, Klein argued. “First, Carney’s speech used the word ‘hegemon’ four times. He said the word ‘America’ only once, and then only to specify ‘American hegemony,’” Klein noted. “This is who we are now to our northern neighbors: not the America they once knew, or thought they knew, but ‘the hegemon.’”

In Davos, Carney said, “The system’s power comes not from its truth but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true.” Klein cast Carney’s role as refusing to “perform” and giving others permission to stop performing as well. Trump and Carney, he wrote, understand each other “all too well.”

Ahead of Trump's term, Klein said he spoke to advisors about the foreign policy philosophy of the second term. All of them said some version of the same warning that the U.S. never uses its power as leverage, and under Trump, it will.

Carney called that out, alleging that great powers of the world are “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.”

Trump promptly responded in his speech that Canada only exists because of the United States. "Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements," said Trump.

Klein closed by calling the speech a "risk," as he rejected Trump's "nakedly transactional or thoroughly corrupt" worldview. Unlike Trump, Carney "intend[s] to do something more with his power than profit off it. It was a bracing speech, but more than that, it was a brave act. It was the kind of act that Trumpism suggests does not exist, the kind of act that rebuts Trumpism by simply existing."

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MMA

The Fox-Trump fusion in two Fox & Friends segments

Is it state-run media, or a media-run state? Yes.

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 01/21/26

A year into President Donald Trump’s second turn in the Oval Office, it has become virtually impossible to tell where his administration ends and Fox News begins.

Trump arrived for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday morning amid alarm from U.S. allies over his manic, unhinged, and unnerving demands for NATO member Denmark to hand over Greenland. At a Davos speech the day before, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned of a “rupture” in the world order, in which international rules are being replaced by the mantra that “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”

Here’s how Fox & Friends co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy put it as a helicopter bearing the president touched down in Davos: “It feels like even though this meeting has been going on for a couple days and speeches have been made and interviews have been done, it feels like nothing starts until President Trump arrives — until daddy's home, as so many people say.”

“Just think about the anticipation, the stakes that are going to be made here, just with the presence of President Trump,” she glowed, adding: “Here you have this global conference where President Trump is about to blow it up in terms of his negotiations and stands, and yet nothing starts until he arrives.”

“It is a new day,” she concluded. “America is the center of everything. President Trump is the leader that everything hinges on.”

Video

Citation

From the January 21, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

Campos-Duffy isn’t just a typically sycophantic Fox host with a penchant for conspiracy theories. Her husband, former Fox contributor and Fox Business host Sean Duffy, is one of 24 former network employees who went through the revolving door between the network and the second Trump administration, and he is now the secretary of transportation (Fox & Friends’ former weekend co-host Pete Hegseth is Duffy’s Cabinet colleague as secretary of defense).

At a normal news outlet, employing the wife of a Cabinet secretary for a role which allowed her to shower the president with praise would be an unheard-of ethical disaster. But at Fox, it may not have even been the biggest such calamity of the day.

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Mark Carney at the forefront of every harmful globalist idea: Marc Morano - Rebel News

Rebel News

Climate Depot's Marc Morano joins The Ezra Levant Show, where he explains how prior to becoming prime minister, Mark Carney was pulling th

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⋅ March 14, 2025

This could lead to a MAGA movement in Canada, expert predicts | Fox Business Video

Fox Business

Climate Depot executive editor Marc Morano gives his take on Canada appointing UN Climate Envoy Mark Carney to be prime minister on 'The Bottom ...

'Worst-Case Scenario': Canada Trades Trudeau For Another … Trudeau – IJR

ijr.com

Mark Carney, the newly elected Canadian Liberal Party leader positioned to succeed Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister, may impose familiar far-left ...

'Worst-Case Scenario': Canada Trades Trudeau For Another … Trudeau - The Daily Caller

The Daily Caller

Newly elected Canadian Liberal Party leader Mark Carney is positioned to succeed Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister.

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