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Bev54

Bev54's Journal
Bev54's Journal
July 1, 2025

As we, in Canada, celebrate our day, we mourn our previous friendship with our neighbours to the south.

This was found in the Vancouver Sun newspaper (I forgot the writers name). It spells out our feelings right now, however, there is one paragraph that I put in italics because it is obvious he does not read the likes of DU, to understand there are many Americans not quiet about our split with the US. I am including an old video at the end (from about 14-15 years ago) but celebrates our pride in our country.

“Goodbye, America.

It’s been nice knowing you.

Goodbye New York, and your Jewish delicatessens with corned beef sandwiches stacked as high as your skyline.

Goodbye Detroit, my boyhood neighbour, and so long to Tiger Stadium, the Detroit Institute of Arts and Motown.

Goodbye Bellingham, Seattle and Portland — how I’ll miss my Cascadian cousins with our shared Pacific sensibilities. And while I’m at it, goodbye to the cheap gas and shoreline cottages of Point Roberts, America’s appendix dangling just below the border not a mile from me. What was once so close has never been so far.

Goodbye Stag Leap’s Pinot Noir, Maker’s Mark bourbon, and Hebrew National hotdogs. My tastebuds mourn.

Goodbye to the cowards on both sides of the border who have demonstrated that whatever fidelity to democratic ideals they profess to have extends only so far as their self-interest. They should get a real job, say, in a chain gang.

Goodbye to anyone, again on both sides of the border, who bends the knee to Trump, rather than standing up to him, as any self-respecting person would and should, and telling him to piss off.

Goodbye to a culture that demands we bend the knee.

Goodbye languid vacations in Maui and Palm Springs. My next winter vacation will be in a sunny climate other than any America can offer, and preferably in a country the U.S. has treated as disdainfully as mine. I’ll have more than a few to pick from.

Most painful of all, goodbye to my American friends, some of whom I have known all my life, and some of whom I’ve collected along the way. I can cross your border but no longer wish to: Your Narcissist-in-Chief has decreed that my countrymen and I have the choice of becoming destitute, vassals or enemies. I’m choosing the latter

Meanwhile, your silence and the silence of all Americans in response to this aggression leaves me disheartened. That silence speaks volumes. I — we — have heard you loud and clear how little our friendship as a country means to you.
Goodbye to the image of America I once held dear — the America of Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley and James Brown, of George Gershwin and Aaron Copeland, of Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut and Mark Twain, of Martin Luther King and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Does not include our DU friends.

Goodbye to what I envied as the country that prided itself on encouraging unparalleled innovation in science, art and business. Any good that remains of it has been overshadowed by rapacity, cheap commercialism and egotism.

Goodbye to that ever-present sense of inferiority I once had when considering the relationship between Canada and America. What doubt I had of our own greatness is gone, and in its place is a certitude that Canada is superior to the U.S. in all the ways that matter. I look across the border now and see a violent, burgeoning autocracy now ever on the edge of civil war, and a population that is either cheering on this new brutalism or quaking in fear from it.

Goodbye to tepid patriotism. If Trump has done us any favour, it is awakening us to the fact that we can no longer take Canada’s existence for granted, that the bad actors in the world have begun to look covetously upon our improbably vast land that is laden with riches, that they want those riches and that niceness as a national character is not enough to dissuade them from taking them.

Schoolyard bullies don’t want to be buddies. They want your lunch.

And after a long era of living a geopolitical life of convenient economic and military subservience, we’ve awakened to the fact that we are going to have to relearn our independence and fight any way we can to keep it.

Goodbye to living under the American nuclear umbrella, or any form of American hegemony. Goodbye to negotiation, wheedling, genuflecting or feel-good hands-across-the-border fairy tales. The American government has shown that established alliances mean nothing to it now, and so cannot be trusted. In Trump’s new world order, all the old verities are off the table, so let us make new ones.

Do levy tariffs, as we have promised to do, and do grit our way through the inevitable economic pain that will come. Re-arm as if we were on a war footing, because we are on a war footing. Conduct the mother of all public relation campaigns that let Americans know how badly they are perceived in the world, that they’ve gone from the shining city on the hill to just another empire with the same tired territorial ambitions as Russia or China. Do anything to impress upon Americans that their government is without real friends or allies, and that they, in essence, are alone.

So, goodbye America, it’s been nice knowing you, but I don’t know you anymore. I’ve reached that point in our relationship where any admiration I have had for you has been replaced by a new, angry resolve, which is: I won’t consort with the enemy”



&ab_channel=ClassifiedVEVO#democracy #authoritarianism #canada #usa #politics #monday #gaz
June 20, 2025

George Clooney's documentary was released on June 17, 2025 and we heard nothing

I am not sure if this was already posted because I have been busy and not on DU as much lately. In case it has not or others missed it, the documentary is called "Surviving Ohio State". I did a google search on where to watch but I am in Canada so it might be different for you but this is what came up:

Surviving Ohio State, a documentary movie is available to stream now. Watch it on Max, Sling TV - Live Sports, News, Shows + Freestream, The Roku Channel, Sling TV - Live Sports, News, Shows + Freestream, DIRECTV, DIRECTV or Sling TV - Live Sports, News, Shows + Freestream on your Roku device.

June 18, 2025

Carney comments on Trump in presser after G7 summit

Found this on my facebook feed this am:

At a G7 press conference yesterday, Carney took a range of questions. To me, these two stand out.

JP Tasker, CBC News asked Carney: President Trump says tariffs are simple, and what you're proposing to resolve the trade dispute is complex. What's he talking about? What have you pitched that's complex?

Carney thinks, then says: Complexity is in the eye of the beholder, sometimes.

HIT: Trump stable genius notion falls like a big, fat, orange sitting duck.

https://www.youtube.com/live/UZGoW4oGf5g...

Justin Ling, Freelancer asked: I wonder what you make of [Trump's] comments suggesting that it was personally offensive to Vladimir Putin to kick him out of the G7 after the invasion of Crimea.

Carney replied: With respect to... personally offensive... to put it mildly... the citizens of Ukraine and the inhabitants of Crimea when Russia invaded, in 2014 -- was the cause of their ejection from the G8.

HIT: Trump's factually incorrect support for Putin is blown away, and the bullseye is moved onto Trump's loving allegiance to Putin.

https://www.youtube.com/live/UZGoW4oGf5g...

In the press shooting gallery, Carney is a marksman.
-- Jim Miles

March 30, 2025

How a US/Canada war might look like (satire a letter home)

Found this on my FB feed this am and thought you might enjoy as much as I did.

From:Liz Cheney/Adam Kinzinger Against Trump

A Satire to Make Your Day!
One of my Canadian friends shared this. I don’t know who wrote it though - pretty sure they are Canadian though! It’s making Canadians laugh through this stressful time.

“The year is 2027, and the war that America launched on Canada rages on. Our first attempt at economic conquest failed in 2025, when they formed close ties with Asia and Europe to stave off the starvation effects of our tariffs. In 2026 we turned to outright military attack, in an attempt to turn them into the 51st state. We threw the first punch. In imperial.

It’s now 8 months into the conflict with the Snow Mexicans, with no end in sight.

Below is a letter from an American soldier on the front lines of the 49th parallel…

Dear Mom,
Trump thought his invasion of Canada would be swift, but it’s been tougher than any of us thought. Who knew that after deploying their entire military and reserves they’d reach the depths they did in recruitment that they did? Turning to amateur hockey players to fill their ranks. For whom violence is a hobby, and somehow seems to be about half their population.

I thought December was the worst of the frigid torture, but January has brought a fresh new hell frozen over.
We’re 55 miles south of Winnipeg, and temperatures go down to -25 degrees Celsius (a bad metric habit we plan on breaking them of if we win) these days.
Many of us Yanks are freezing to death in these sub-arctic temperatures. My platoon is fighting hypothermia by taking turns in a hot tub made out of a foxhole and geothermic heat, a technique a Canadian Prisoner of War (POW), Jean-Pierre, taught us when he got bored.

The Canadian soldiers are in t-shirts, playing bunker hockey. Damned snowbacks.
In a rather nice display of kindness, they throw mittens over to us. Well, we thought it was ‘nice’. We learned quickly that they keep our fingers from falling off due to frostbite — but it also means we can’t return fire as our trigger fingers don’t work when mitten covered. The bilingual bastards knew this.
These snowspooks knew a lot of things — like having winter fatigues that are entirely white. It turns out our camo uniforms stick out like a sore thumb in Canadian winter.

Despite not having the war chest that we have, they’re surprisingly clever. They’ve whittled down hockey sticks into shanks and are using them as bayonets in hand-to-hand combat.

These syrup-suckers trained their Canadian Geese, what they call “Cobra Chickens”, to pick our drones right out of the air. The nerds they brought in from the Canada Space Agency easily learned how to reprogram them. So they’ve found an endless source of drones, courtesy of the American government.
Their surprisingly ample supply of groundhogs from the prairies have been trained to burrow into our bunkers and drop explosives. And their beavers have successfully choked our supply of fresh water with their dams.
The toque-wearing poutine junkies learned to coat grenades with maple syrup, to stick to whatever they’re thrown at.

In some ways, they are the polite adversaries that we had hoped for. Every time they throw a Molotov cocktail made out of a Molson Canadian beer bottle into our bunkers they yell out ‘sorrey’. That’s quite polite of them. However, that good grace is entirely undone by their brutal psychological warfare.

The Canooks play Nickelback and Justin Bieber on a subwoofer, 24 hours a day, to break our morale.
They’ve been airdropping marijuana onto our side. Half my platoon has been incapacitated by the potency of their pot. Steve said, and I quote, “I’m higher than Snoop Dogg at a Willie Nelson concert” before laughing like a lunatic for 87 minutes straight.

Entering the war, they clearly knew more about us than we knew about them. They’ve dangerously tapped into our overwhelming urges for patriotic pride by having one soldier yell out the names of states and cities. “Is anyone from…North Dakota?” The minute the Dakotan pops up in pride yelling “ME!”, their sniper picks him off.
For a country that doesn’t have a lot of guns, they surprisingly have some of the best snipers in the world. As we learned far too late, 3 out of the top 10 longest sniper kills in the world are Canadian.

Thankfully, they’ve grown since their Geneva Convention days, when their official policy was ‘Fuck Around and Find Out’. I learned from our POW, Jean-Pierre (surprisingly nice guy, he taught me how to make maple taffy in the snow), that they refer to the Geneva Conventions as the ‘Geneva Suggestions’, or the ‘list of things Canada isn’t allowed to do anymore’.
I can see why the Geneva Conventions were invented in 1949 after the end of WWII. It was to stop the Canadians. They were (and are) savages, who did things like throwing canned foods into German trenches only to lull them into a false sense of security, and then lobbing grenades.

They also took no prisoners and killed the wounded.

My entire platoon is desperately hoping they keep to the Geneva Conventions should any of us be captured.
But so far they’ve adapted an even more evil-maniacal strategy when it comes to POWs. They’ve been treating them so well that they turn. When captured, they get a trip to a nice Canadian hospital and a full workup. They also teach them how to ice skate and play hockey. They feed them authentic poutine, which is a welcome treat compared to the MREs our government has been purchasing from Russia. Nobody likes Borscht, Trump.

I saw my buddy Dave the other day, he’s fighting with the Canadians now. He’s taken his new Canadian patriotism seriously, he started chanting “Build the wall!”…then he started building it.
Pfft, turncoat.

To boost morale, Trump sends us sporadic visits from Mr Beast and The Village People. Our morale hasn’t been boosted. And we’re starting to prefer even the Nickelback.

But the Canadians have been successful in keeping their spirits up. Their government has kept them entertained by Ryan Reynolds, who learned some surprisingly quippy stand-up routines — and performs them in the Deadpool outfit. And Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson has been their motivational speaker, who in a surprise move activated his Canadian citizenship to distance himself from this embarrassing war.

I have to say, there’s something paralyzingly majestic about watching the Canadian soldiers ride into battle with smiles on their faces atop their military-grade moose (mooses? meese? meeses?).

Mom, I fear we shall not be victorious and I fear for our safety. In addition to the millions of toothless amateur hockey players, who fight like angry badgers, joining their ranks — they’re calling up an even more terrifying brigade of soldiers.

Menopausal women.

These fearless she-demons are seemingly impervious to cold — and have redefined the term running amok. Hailing from Gen X, absolutely nothing instills fear into their hearts. America however continually refuses to activate our menopausal brigade, due to our conservative government and gender and age discrimination.
All of us hope not to confront these hot-flash-having lady devils in battle.

I don’t know what Trump was thinking. We can’t even beat these hosers in battle, how does he expect to keep 40 million of these hostile Zamboni-riding bastards under control if he wins?

I have to stop writing now, my fingers are so numb from frostbite that I can’t fathom why we want to take this land. It seems inhospitable, despite the occasional hospitality of the Canucks.
Mom, please send maple syrup in your next care package, Jean-Pierre is going to teach me how to make even the borscht palatable with it.

You know what, scratch that, Jean-Pierre just promised if I helped him escape he’d give me Canadian citizenship, 7 Saskatoon berry pies, and a date with Nina Dobrev.

O Canada, here I come.

Love you Mom.
Sincerely,
Barron”

March 22, 2025

The truth about Trump's outrageous claims of Canada's trade deficits and high tariffs.

Trump continues his lies on tariffs and trade to convince the American people that Canada is bad and Trump is fighting for them. This article will help to understand the truth and be able to educate others.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-trade-war-disinformation-1.7489805

The reality is that over 97 per cent of U.S.-Canada trade in agricultural goods and over 99 per cent of trade in manufactured goods occurs under a zero-tariff rate, as Canada's Ambassador Kirsten Hillman now spends much of her time patiently explaining.

The numbers often cited by the White House are in fact penalty tariffs that are only incurred when trade in certain items exceeds a certain volume, and rarely or never charged in practice. Most trade between the U.S. and Canada is not subject to any limitations of volume, but a small number of products are. The attention is often on dairy, explained Al Mussell, research lead and founder of Agri-Food Economic Systems, Inc., but the quota list goes wider than that.

"You could talk about other supply-managed products [chicken, eggs] in Canada, you could talk about sugar and peanuts in the United States," he said.
March 17, 2025

Canada's new PM, Mark Carney, has invited Zelenskyy to the G7 summit in Canada in June.

I wonder if Trump will show up or is he afraid he might not get an exemption or for sure he will get massive protests from Canadians.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/russia-ukraine-war/article/mark-carney-invites-zelenskyy-to-g7-summit-in-june/

March 15, 2025

Open Letter from Canadian to Maga and Maple Leaf Maga

This is an open letter from Jim Elliot who is a news reporter, I think he is in the Yukon:

Dear 77,301,997 Trump-Loving, Conspiracy-Huffing, Rage-Addicted Americans (And the Canadian Dumbfucks Who Worship Them)
Oh, hey there. Sit down. Read this. Try not to cry.

Listen, I get it. You think we’re just a bunch of polite, snow-loving, maple syrup-chugging pushovers up here in Canada. You’ve been misled. We’re polite, sure. But only until we get pissed off. And you, dear MAGA cultists, are testing our fucking patience.

Let’s clear up a few things about who we actually are, because you seem to be confused. We’re a country that gives a shit about our elders, our kids, and our most vulnerable. We actually value education instead of treating it like some left-wing brainwashing experiment. We don’t get all horny over billionaires hoarding wealth while our neighbours die in poverty. We don’t fantasize about returning to the 1940s, and we sure as hell don’t think the most corrupt sack of shit on the planet was personally chosen by God.

Who does that? Oh right—you.

But let’s go deeper.
We’ve Always Been Your Best Fucking Neighbour—So What the Hell Happened?
Time and time again, Canada has been there when the U.S. needed us.

World War I? We were in the trenches before you even showed up. World War II? We were storming the beaches of Normandy while you were still debating whether or not to help. Korea, Afghanistan, peacekeeping missions—you name it, we’ve had your back. We sent our firefighters to help when California burned. When Katrina wiped out New Orleans, we were there. And on 9/11? We fucking welcomed thousands of stranded Americans into our homes, because that’s what decent people do.

And what did we ask for in return? Nothing. We didn’t demand grovelling gratitude or threaten to “never help again” if you didn’t kiss our ass. That’s your toxic, transactional bullshit—not ours.

Enter Your Mango-Coloured Messiah: A Convicted Criminal With a Cult

So after all that, what do we get? Your country elects a spray-tanned sociopath with a vocabulary of a Grade 3 dropout, and suddenly we’re the bad guys? You’ve got a convicted fraudster leading your country—a man who insults war heroes, mocks the disabled, and jerks off to the thought of authoritarian rule—and we’re the problem? You’ve got a party foaming at the mouth to gut democracy, roll back civil rights, and turn the U.S. into a theocratic shithole, but we’re the ones who should shut up?
Nah. Fuck that.

And to the Canadian Trump Bootlickers—Sit the Fuck Down
I can already hear the Canadian MAGA muppets shrieking, “Mind your own broken country!” Oh, sweetheart. If Canada were actually broken, it would be because of dumbass conservatives like you who take marching orders from a foreign conman.

Is Canada perfect? Of course not. But unlike you bootlicking clowns, we don’t rally behind leaders who openly admire fascists and flirt with the idea of rounding up immigrants. We don’t foam at the mouth over the idea of a “war on woke” while pretending climate change isn’t real. And we certainly don’t suck off billionaires while pretending trickle-down economics isn’t a scam.

You morons scream about freedom, but what you really mean is the freedom to be an ignorant, unvaccinated, gun-hoarding dipshit. The moment someone else—be it a woman, an immigrant, or a person of colour—wants the same freedom you enjoy? Oh no, suddenly that’s tyranny. Fuck off with that hypocrisy.

Canada Isn’t Broken—You Just Can’t Handle Reality

What do we actually have in Canada? Universal health care. Sensible gun laws. A social safety net that, while imperfect, at least tries to keep people from starving in the streets.

Meanwhile, in your MAGA utopia, you can literally go bankrupt because you got cancer. You send kids to school in bulletproof backpacks because you refuse to do anything about mass shootings. You’re so brainwashed by billionaires that you think raising the minimum wage is worse than cutting taxes for a corporation that made $100 billion last quarter.

And you have the fucking gall to call us broken?

Mind My Own Business? I Fucking Wish

Oh, I’d love to. Really, I would. But here’s the problem—when you share a border with a country of over 300 million people, and that country elects a conspiracy-loving, anti-science lunatic to power, it becomes my business.
When your president guts economic, military, and trade alliances that help keep the world stable? That’s my business. When your leader openly muses about invading sovereign countries—including ours? That’s definitely my business.
And when a bunch of dumbfuck Canadians start acting like America’s the blueprint for success, despite all evidence to the contrary? That’s all of our business.

We’re Watching, and We’re Not Impressed

So, dear Trump cultists, both American and Canadian: we’re onto you. We see your bullshit, your hypocrisy, your complete detachment from reality. And we’re not buying a single second of it.

We’re your neighbours, your allies, your friends—but we’re not your doormats. We’re polite, but we’re not fucking stupid. And right now? We’re watching. Closely.

Warmest regards,
A Canadian Who’s Had Enough of Your Bullshit

March 12, 2025

Just heard on BBC that EU has now set counter tariffs

On US. I heard earlier the UK did not, what the hell is wrong with them? And so the world war of tariffs heats up.

March 11, 2025

Doug Ford has already backed off his 25% surcharge on electricity to have a meeting with Lutnick.

for a meeting. What a weenie, keep them on until the meeting, which is supposed to happen on Thursday. When do we learn, do not trust this admin in any way.

March 1, 2025

There is an app to find events and protests that works with indivisible and other organizations.

It is called Mobilize.US

You can apparently look by zip code or town or city name.
I haven't looked at it because I am Canadian but read it on a comment on Rick Wilson's substack.

I hope it works for you all!

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