
Sittin’ around the house,
watchin’ the sun trace shadows on the floor;
Searching for signs of life, but there’s nobody home…
Better Than Ezra, from “Good”
“There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.”
Frank Zappa
I imagine most of you have heard the expression, “Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight”. The meaning is pretty self-evident, but the Free Dictionary helpfully frames its intent: “To come poorly prepared or equipped for some task, goal, competition, or confrontation. Often used in the negative as a forewarning or piece of advice.“
You are far more likely to come ill-prepared for some task, goal, competition or confrontation if you are stupid. In recent years many of us have become accustomed to stupidity in our elected and appointed officials, but watching Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly’s performance of her duties is like being chained to the village idiot. To put the situation in the context of the expression above, sending her abroad to represent even the flailing country this one has become is like taking six inches of dental floss to a gunfight. Perhaps while wearing a T-shirt with a bullseye printed on it. It’s asking to be sent home with a red face and ruler-tracks on your bum.
Melanie Joly is the Canadian Sarah Palin; she was a cartwheeling disaster as Heritage Minster. Heritage Minister!! The department’s mandate centers on “fostering and promoting “Canadian identity and values, cultural development, and heritage”. Sounds like a job the average drugstore manager could perform with distinction, especially if he or she had a whole department of more than 1,800 employees to help and advise him or her. But tasked with management of the festivities and ceremony attendant upon the 150th anniversary of Canada Day, Melanie Joly rolled out a train wreck that earned comments like “I have never seen such a poor, chaotic display. Shame on you Ottawa.” And: “Please, (Minister Joly), I beg you to step out of your protective shell and acknowledge what a mess Canada Day was and take some responsibility for it.” And: “Time for you to resign!” The local news of the village she is idiot of – Le Journal de Montreal – said “she sounds like a living answering machine having a nervous breakdown”. No need to wonder any further where the inspiration came from for the Sarah Palin reference. “Joly’s penchant for bafflegab made her a frequent target of cartoonists and humorists in the province — hardly what Trudeau was hoping for when he made Joly his highest-profile Quebec minister.”
Sacked from the stress-magnet job of Heritage Minister, Joly was shuffled downward – not resoundingly kicked from the top step of Parliament, remember, she’s a personal friend of our talking wig-stand Prime Minister – to bring her administrative talents to bear on the minor portfolios of tourism, official languages and la Francophonie.
And then, just when things looked darkest…she vaulted straight to Minister of Foreign Affairs, promoted by her good friend Justin Trudeau in what critics claimed was a reward for her loyalty in the 2021 election which saw the Liberals re-elected, as well as toads raining from the sky and a lightning bolt straight from the finger of Jeebus. And things went rapidly downhill from there.
“My guess is that during that very challenging campaign, she cemented her status as a trustworthy lieutenant,” Mr. Reid said. “When you fall behind during a campaign and then mount a comeback, you see up close who can be counted on. I suspect he saw that in her and decided he wanted that in Foreign Affairs.”
What struck me on reading the reference, though, was a comment she made in describing her vision for the Foreign Affairs responsibility. She was speaking about possible disciplinary action which might be taken against China, but she claimed, “I can tell you, however, that we have no illusions. Our eyes will be wide open.”
And then the Canadian Minister for Foreign Affairs, with her eyes wide open, concurred with the United States that the Russians likely blew up their own gas pipeline, all part of Putin’s weaponization of energy.
Asked by CNN anchor Jim Sciutto during a conversation in Washington, hosted by the Atlantic Council, who was behind the damage, Joly did not mention Russia by name but pointed to allies’ assessments that the attacks were deliberate. “At this point we’re still investigating, but obviously we want to make sure that we do things the right way, but we’re not naïve,” she said. “You’re not naïve as to who’s behind it?” Sciutto responded.“As I said, we won’t speculate but at the same time, we want to make sure that — the world needs to understand that this is very important European infrastructure that was sabotaged,” the minister added.
She added no gas was flowing through either pipeline at the time the leaks occurred.
Really? No gas flowing through either pipeline…at the time of the leak? Then how could there be a leak? Leak of what? The very next paragraph confides,
“On Thursday, Swedish officials discovered a fourth leak along the Nord Stream gas pipelines, vital energy links for Europe that have been spewing methane into the Baltic Sea since Monday following two underwater explosions.” Spewing methane. Natural gas is almost completely methane.
And NATO muttonheads were quite happy to pontificate and puff over these ‘deliberate, reckless and irresponsible acts of sabotage’ while they believed the perpetrator would never be identified.
But then, Seymour Hersh – one of the most credible journalists alive – broke a story on how American Navy divers had planted the explosives under cover of a NATO exercise, assisted by Norway, which explosives were later detonated remotely, destroying the pipeline. America had threatened it, had tried to stop its construction through sanctions and international bullying, had shopped proposals to Europe that Europeans buy American ‘molecules of freedom’ instead, and had flatly promised to stop it ever going into operation. Means, motive and opportunity. And yet, when America announced that Russia must have done it itself, Melanie Joly agreed. After all, we’re not naive.
To this moment there has not been any statement of which I am aware in which Melanie Joly recants or expresses doubt in her conviction that Russia blew up its own pipelines.
Continue reading “A Knife in Search of a Gunfight.”