Well it is evident that Pakistan is now taking up probably the last of the imperialist rentier roles it was made for playing. That is all it ever did and that is the real purpose for it's creation 79 years ago -- although just some decades ago, the patina of its fake facade seemed very real and nobody questioned it, as this country despite it's contradictions seemed to be a normal nation state, yet one which could for some strange and aberrant reason -- never be run in a "normal" manner. But every such realization has a time. I wonder how much time this entity has left...
But y' know, except for the 'normal' thing, and for about double the 79 (next yr to equal 160, founded 1867), similar can be said of Canada where I am....
Yes! Strange you should say that. I spent about a year in Calgary nearly 30 years ago -- one of the things that struck me as strange then was that Canada was struggling to acquire an upstart nation-state identity, yet it had been founded (as far as I thought I knew) to cultivate a new kind of international and cosmopolitan identity based on the best that collective European civilisation had to offer…..it was rather disillusioning and exacerbating to realize that Canada was struggling to become just another Britain or France.
France, no, its influence was long gone by the time Canada confederated (those 79x2 plus yr ago). What they were left with physically in this part of the hemisphere, was a few islands off the coast of Newfoundland, perhaps a concession for fishing-related purposes, but maybe the main thing was the longish important-seeming names associated with concessions to a defeated France, as in, St-Pierre et Miquelon (where I actually spent time becoming fluent in French).
But the failure of the Confederacy in the US south was problem enough for the British, who ran South-support out of pre-Canada Canada. The threat of the pull toward the US - I think eg British Columbian notables had actually requested naively of Queen Vic to be allowed to join, isolated as they were from E Canada; and Indian & Métis connexions out west had any eventual 49th parallel border as irrelevant, for examples - was significant in places, but so also was the reluctance of early provinces to confederate into Canada. US Civil War end 1865, Lincoln done in, recalcitrant Canadians-to-be about Confederation were won over by British easy infiltration of anti-British Irish Fenians, who then launched a peculiar set of 1866 raids from US into parts of E Canada. It worked, Confederation was 1867 (= 2026 - (79x2) - 1). (Btw 1866 was decisive as well re telegraph-building competition: British-backed N.A.-U.K. connexion nudged out the overland US-Russia one; there are hints today of a possible renascent US-Russian connexion of importance, but only it seems if Trumpians can hold on and further consolidate power)
Mainly I think apart from an imagined strategic aspect of British overland Atlantic-Pacific connexion, British bakers had sunk money into underperforming railways especially, so to somewhat guarantee return on investment... I think Canada only became viable as "normal" once mining began in a big way in N Ontario in late 19th c. But it was always predominantly British-proud and -leaning, if having to split allegiance in anglosupremacy looking southward, too - until today in the eyes of the majority. Thus the recent anti-trumpian prevalence now with important political effect in Canada. I recall a Quebecois entertainer saying once after touring English Canada, something like, in ref. to culture, y a rien là (ain't nothin' there). Canada can be said to be defined by simply setting itself off against Americans (for better and worse), all the more in evidence now again, as it was when many fought on the British side in the Revolutionary War a century pre-Confederation.
Anyway Canada is beholden to anglosupremacists particularly in Britain, and PM Carney (ex- of Bank of England, whose political ascendancy of late here is largely owing to apprehension about trumpishness, as well as inept main federal political Opposition) pointedly had the King read the Speech from the Throne in Parliament recently to reinforce the point. That Charles and self-caricaturing Schwab, n.b., launched the "great reset" during covidiana, plots closely conjoined, and Canada is yet one of their banner polities for that despite things not going as covi-perps - surely run out of Br. - had intended.
Maybe the diff from Pak re 'normality' has to do with more experience with modernity, and closer cultural affiliation with colonial masters.
No I didn't mean France literally and just used it as an example -- although it is projected as the second influence in Canadian life as far as language is concerned.
But it was immediately apparent to me that "Canada" was in fact "British North America" before all else. Which is how it actually came into being, under the 1867 Act of the same name.
But even so, if it had such a claim to it's own individuality which in fact it could have had -- it could have done far better.
It could have had, esp. regarding the seminal moment of rebellion in the 1880s out west. The Métis, not so much the Scots origin ones but Francophone ones, were hard done by by the duplicitous Canadian regime. Their rebellion recalled the exiled Louis Riel from the US - he'd been seminal in establishment of what is now Manitoba - as leader. The on-the-ground leader, Gabriel Dumont (later to achieve a measure of fame as sharpshooter frontiersman type in US circuses) with despite far fewer manpower than what the federal govt eventually sent to quell the rebellion; Dumont was keen on guerilla tactics such as cutting communications and transport lines and getting ahead of the wilderness-disadvantaged troops from down east. Riel overruled Dumont's strategy to take the fight to the enemy instead of negotiation and waiting, presumably with purportedly higher purpose in mind (must sound frustratingly familiar to some re the Russ-Ukr conflict now). This was acquiesced in as he was far more learned in a Euro-centric way and was looked up to, not without some reason. Eventually things like Gatling gun use was too much for the justifiably rebellious. Riel was hanged.
Note that these rebels had all elements antithetical to the Orangeman British supremacists - Catholic, French, Indian in one bundle. Riel had a dream that the west would eventually become as it did, a home to many people internationally (in particular connexion to the war that dominates discussion on this 'stack, many Ukranians located out West, and while hard done by during WW1, became a rather important political support/influence for anti-Russ. Ukr nationalism; note the prior Cdn Liberal administration's #2 after the PM, a descendant of and it is felt motivated similarly to, an important Nazist era Ukr journalist who eventually came to Canada; I do not think it a coincidence that of all places in Canada where the Ku Klux Klan once flourished most, it was in such areas, however passé now there is an apparent linkage in facets of mindset).
Fyi two other key killings happened not long before, one of gifted author-politician D'Arcy McGee, assassinated by an accused Fenian-linked patsy who was hanged, but who plausibly denied committing the murder. Seems from dissident close reading of events back then, that the getaway carriage of the actual killer might have been driven by the fella who eventually was in same employ of PM Macdonald, who claimed to have lost a dear friend in McGee...Macdonald's renowned drunkenness may have been part of coping with having to play the duplicitous games of a Br-loyal guy in his position.
Canadian politics was not always boring! But that it could very well have been a Métis-inflected nation, as one prominent author held (Ralston Saul, A Fair Country/ Mon pays métis, '08), was a real prospect, that could have hinged on letting Dumont create ample military "facts on the ground" before the govt could get its act together. Cross country railway had yet to be built (same promised to British Columbia so they would not try to secede, too). The wonderful obliviousness of Canadians to British machinations to their own detriment, was acclaimed by the likes of arch-Imperialist Milner in Br, to be taken advantage of, and so it goes to this day.
"We would not be here without the Field Marshal, who is a great military leader, statesman and diplomat," he said. "I have a few other notes of appreciation.
First of all, to the Prime Minister of Pakistan – a dear friend of the president, a dear friend of mine, and a guy whose leadership and very careful, skilled negotiations have gotten us to this point."
Because he never learned history, so he - in foreign policy - acts as a bumbling idiot. The only reason Vance was chosen was that he was not an agent of the Deep State, unlike Pence. But as one now finds out, he has his own limitations.
His own boss in 2018 publicly blamed Pakistan for aiding the Taliban and allied "terrorists"; after all, Trump 1.0 built his legacy on targeting "radical Islamic terrorism", or at least vowing to do so.
Team Trump has talked so long about this threat and its links to state-sponsored crackdowns on religious minorities such as Christians, so surely Vance knows about its regional import.
He certainly knows that Pakistani allies Türkiye and Qatar sponsor Islamist proxies, not least in Syria, that expel or otherwise marginalize Christians, as the Qatari emirs, like the Pakistani elites, do at home.
Vance knows that Pakistan, as a Muslim state, is tied to the very terrorism he speaks of (not least Saudi), so I have trouble seeing his remarks as signs of idiocy rather than mendacity.
There is only so much mendacity can do. Most people do accept it in Trump (or if we want to use a scriptural reference, young David), but I don't think they would accept it in JD. He simply doesn't fit the role of Prince Hal to Tucker Carlson's Falstaff.
If so, then Vance still cannot be excused, given that there is enough public information about Pakistani Islamism to satisfy even the most rudimentary foreign-policy background. He cannot credibly claim ignorance, in part due to Christian safety being his specialty.
"We would not be here without the Field Marshal, who is a great military leader, statesman and diplomat," he said. "I have a few other notes of appreciation.
First of all, to the Prime Minister of Pakistan – a dear friend of the president, a dear friend of mine, and a guy whose leadership and very careful, skilled negotiations have gotten us to this point."
Well it is evident that Pakistan is now taking up probably the last of the imperialist rentier roles it was made for playing. That is all it ever did and that is the real purpose for it's creation 79 years ago -- although just some decades ago, the patina of its fake facade seemed very real and nobody questioned it, as this country despite it's contradictions seemed to be a normal nation state, yet one which could for some strange and aberrant reason -- never be run in a "normal" manner. But every such realization has a time. I wonder how much time this entity has left...
But y' know, except for the 'normal' thing, and for about double the 79 (next yr to equal 160, founded 1867), similar can be said of Canada where I am....
Yes! Strange you should say that. I spent about a year in Calgary nearly 30 years ago -- one of the things that struck me as strange then was that Canada was struggling to acquire an upstart nation-state identity, yet it had been founded (as far as I thought I knew) to cultivate a new kind of international and cosmopolitan identity based on the best that collective European civilisation had to offer…..it was rather disillusioning and exacerbating to realize that Canada was struggling to become just another Britain or France.
France, no, its influence was long gone by the time Canada confederated (those 79x2 plus yr ago). What they were left with physically in this part of the hemisphere, was a few islands off the coast of Newfoundland, perhaps a concession for fishing-related purposes, but maybe the main thing was the longish important-seeming names associated with concessions to a defeated France, as in, St-Pierre et Miquelon (where I actually spent time becoming fluent in French).
But the failure of the Confederacy in the US south was problem enough for the British, who ran South-support out of pre-Canada Canada. The threat of the pull toward the US - I think eg British Columbian notables had actually requested naively of Queen Vic to be allowed to join, isolated as they were from E Canada; and Indian & Métis connexions out west had any eventual 49th parallel border as irrelevant, for examples - was significant in places, but so also was the reluctance of early provinces to confederate into Canada. US Civil War end 1865, Lincoln done in, recalcitrant Canadians-to-be about Confederation were won over by British easy infiltration of anti-British Irish Fenians, who then launched a peculiar set of 1866 raids from US into parts of E Canada. It worked, Confederation was 1867 (= 2026 - (79x2) - 1). (Btw 1866 was decisive as well re telegraph-building competition: British-backed N.A.-U.K. connexion nudged out the overland US-Russia one; there are hints today of a possible renascent US-Russian connexion of importance, but only it seems if Trumpians can hold on and further consolidate power)
Mainly I think apart from an imagined strategic aspect of British overland Atlantic-Pacific connexion, British bakers had sunk money into underperforming railways especially, so to somewhat guarantee return on investment... I think Canada only became viable as "normal" once mining began in a big way in N Ontario in late 19th c. But it was always predominantly British-proud and -leaning, if having to split allegiance in anglosupremacy looking southward, too - until today in the eyes of the majority. Thus the recent anti-trumpian prevalence now with important political effect in Canada. I recall a Quebecois entertainer saying once after touring English Canada, something like, in ref. to culture, y a rien là (ain't nothin' there). Canada can be said to be defined by simply setting itself off against Americans (for better and worse), all the more in evidence now again, as it was when many fought on the British side in the Revolutionary War a century pre-Confederation.
Anyway Canada is beholden to anglosupremacists particularly in Britain, and PM Carney (ex- of Bank of England, whose political ascendancy of late here is largely owing to apprehension about trumpishness, as well as inept main federal political Opposition) pointedly had the King read the Speech from the Throne in Parliament recently to reinforce the point. That Charles and self-caricaturing Schwab, n.b., launched the "great reset" during covidiana, plots closely conjoined, and Canada is yet one of their banner polities for that despite things not going as covi-perps - surely run out of Br. - had intended.
Maybe the diff from Pak re 'normality' has to do with more experience with modernity, and closer cultural affiliation with colonial masters.
No I didn't mean France literally and just used it as an example -- although it is projected as the second influence in Canadian life as far as language is concerned.
But it was immediately apparent to me that "Canada" was in fact "British North America" before all else. Which is how it actually came into being, under the 1867 Act of the same name.
But even so, if it had such a claim to it's own individuality which in fact it could have had -- it could have done far better.
It could have had, esp. regarding the seminal moment of rebellion in the 1880s out west. The Métis, not so much the Scots origin ones but Francophone ones, were hard done by by the duplicitous Canadian regime. Their rebellion recalled the exiled Louis Riel from the US - he'd been seminal in establishment of what is now Manitoba - as leader. The on-the-ground leader, Gabriel Dumont (later to achieve a measure of fame as sharpshooter frontiersman type in US circuses) with despite far fewer manpower than what the federal govt eventually sent to quell the rebellion; Dumont was keen on guerilla tactics such as cutting communications and transport lines and getting ahead of the wilderness-disadvantaged troops from down east. Riel overruled Dumont's strategy to take the fight to the enemy instead of negotiation and waiting, presumably with purportedly higher purpose in mind (must sound frustratingly familiar to some re the Russ-Ukr conflict now). This was acquiesced in as he was far more learned in a Euro-centric way and was looked up to, not without some reason. Eventually things like Gatling gun use was too much for the justifiably rebellious. Riel was hanged.
Note that these rebels had all elements antithetical to the Orangeman British supremacists - Catholic, French, Indian in one bundle. Riel had a dream that the west would eventually become as it did, a home to many people internationally (in particular connexion to the war that dominates discussion on this 'stack, many Ukranians located out West, and while hard done by during WW1, became a rather important political support/influence for anti-Russ. Ukr nationalism; note the prior Cdn Liberal administration's #2 after the PM, a descendant of and it is felt motivated similarly to, an important Nazist era Ukr journalist who eventually came to Canada; I do not think it a coincidence that of all places in Canada where the Ku Klux Klan once flourished most, it was in such areas, however passé now there is an apparent linkage in facets of mindset).
Fyi two other key killings happened not long before, one of gifted author-politician D'Arcy McGee, assassinated by an accused Fenian-linked patsy who was hanged, but who plausibly denied committing the murder. Seems from dissident close reading of events back then, that the getaway carriage of the actual killer might have been driven by the fella who eventually was in same employ of PM Macdonald, who claimed to have lost a dear friend in McGee...Macdonald's renowned drunkenness may have been part of coping with having to play the duplicitous games of a Br-loyal guy in his position.
Canadian politics was not always boring! But that it could very well have been a Métis-inflected nation, as one prominent author held (Ralston Saul, A Fair Country/ Mon pays métis, '08), was a real prospect, that could have hinged on letting Dumont create ample military "facts on the ground" before the govt could get its act together. Cross country railway had yet to be built (same promised to British Columbia so they would not try to secede, too). The wonderful obliviousness of Canadians to British machinations to their own detriment, was acclaimed by the likes of arch-Imperialist Milner in Br, to be taken advantage of, and so it goes to this day.
Where does Israel and USA stand with Pakistan's foreign policy towards African nations and Turkeye? Is Pakistan working to a covert US/Zionist plan?
Pakistan is a quiet Iran supporter, and Saudis hedge their bets between the USA-Israel and Iran-Pakistan-Türkiye-China axis.
"We would not be here without the Field Marshal, who is a great military leader, statesman and diplomat," he said. "I have a few other notes of appreciation.
First of all, to the Prime Minister of Pakistan – a dear friend of the president, a dear friend of mine, and a guy whose leadership and very careful, skilled negotiations have gotten us to this point."
https://tribune.com.pk/story/2614509/vance-praisespakistan-leaderships-historic-diplomacy
Given this, why has VP Vance lauded Pakistan's leadership so profusely?
Because he never learned history, so he - in foreign policy - acts as a bumbling idiot. The only reason Vance was chosen was that he was not an agent of the Deep State, unlike Pence. But as one now finds out, he has his own limitations.
His own boss in 2018 publicly blamed Pakistan for aiding the Taliban and allied "terrorists"; after all, Trump 1.0 built his legacy on targeting "radical Islamic terrorism", or at least vowing to do so.
Team Trump has talked so long about this threat and its links to state-sponsored crackdowns on religious minorities such as Christians, so surely Vance knows about its regional import.
He certainly knows that Pakistani allies Türkiye and Qatar sponsor Islamist proxies, not least in Syria, that expel or otherwise marginalize Christians, as the Qatari emirs, like the Pakistani elites, do at home.
Vance knows that Pakistan, as a Muslim state, is tied to the very terrorism he speaks of (not least Saudi), so I have trouble seeing his remarks as signs of idiocy rather than mendacity.
There is only so much mendacity can do. Most people do accept it in Trump (or if we want to use a scriptural reference, young David), but I don't think they would accept it in JD. He simply doesn't fit the role of Prince Hal to Tucker Carlson's Falstaff.
If so, then Vance still cannot be excused, given that there is enough public information about Pakistani Islamism to satisfy even the most rudimentary foreign-policy background. He cannot credibly claim ignorance, in part due to Christian safety being his specialty.
"We would not be here without the Field Marshal, who is a great military leader, statesman and diplomat," he said. "I have a few other notes of appreciation.
First of all, to the Prime Minister of Pakistan – a dear friend of the president, a dear friend of mine, and a guy whose leadership and very careful, skilled negotiations have gotten us to this point."
https://tribune.com.pk/story/2614509/vance-praisespakistan-leaderships-historic-diplomacy
Given this, why has VP Vance lauded Pakistan's leadership so profusely?