Finishing the week: some bright notes on a sad day, a widening war in the gulf, and today's Trade War Dispatches

Some bright notes on 9/11 

A standing ovation for Chretien

This glorious old man! 92 years old and still on the ramparts for Canada.

- Joanne Pettis 🇨🇦

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Carney's presentation

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More stories about 9/11 that I didn't know:

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More ridicule for Trump's 9/11 fantasy story

I was in the cockpit of an F-15 streaking toward Flight 93. Or maybe parking my car in Rhode Island. One of those.

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— Tom Nichols (@radiofreetom.bsky.social) September 11, 2026 at 1:07 PM

On a somber note, I saw a video today on Threads showing what actually happened to each of the towers as they fell. I can't bring myself to post it, but click here if you want to watch it.

The Widening Gyre
Trump's war against Iran has already cost the United States most of its bases in the Middle East - with the result that there won't be any repercussions when local rebel groups attack those (former) American allies now.

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Choices have consequences. The decision by the Trump-Netanyahu alliance to go to war with Iran without consulting with allies, or having any sense of consequences, has proven to be a terrible mistake. As Phillips O’Brien describes it, the war in Iran has strengthened Iran and its allies in the region, proven to be a boon to both Putin and China, and dramatically undermined other governments in the region, governments that have relied on American power and competence for decades. Both the region and the wider world are less prosperous and less secure because of these disastrous decisions. Corruption and incompetence also have consequences. So do wrongheaded ideas about big tariffs, and the bizarre belief that the best way to build confidence is to destroy alliances and undermine your friends. It might be said that Donald Trump is his own worst enemy. But that isn’t true. The line extends beyond the circumference of the globe many times over.

- Bob Rae

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The failure to understand the limits of Russian military power before the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine was until that time the greatest failure in modern strategic analysis. The failure to understand the limits of US military power since February 2026 might be worse.

- Phillips P. OBrien

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On a side note, I have been, until recently, a supporter of Israel. The genocide in Gaza has put paid to that, but still, I am terrified for the future of Israel in that region.
For time being, even without US bases in the region standing behind Israel, I think Israel's nuclear capacity will be enough to deter another Six-Day-War type of attack against them from neighbouring states. 

But maybe not forever, now that those US bases are gone and won't be coming back.
It would be tragic, but also ironic, if Netanyahu's success in getting Trump to start an ill-conceived and bumbling war against Iran eventually results in the utter destruction of the State of Israel.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, 

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Dispatches from the Trade War

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Very good piece here by Stephen Maher called Stopping Trump

Short of organizing Hugo Chavez-style neighbourhood militias, Canadians are doing everything that could be reasonably asked of them to demonstrate their commitment to national sovereignty.
They have turned up their noses at dirty Yankee liquor, sworn off Florida’s beaches, and, crucially, voted for the nationalist government of Mark Carney and signalled their support for him, in byelections and public opinion polling....
...I am paying close attention to the trade stories, insofar as I understand them, but if I am to be honest I must admit that I am partly motivated in my support for a hard line by a desire to oppose Trump. This is not derangement, in my view, but based on a rational calculation about the future of life on Earth.
If the Americans want to spend some years in a nostalgic, brutal political cul de sac, that is their business, but Trump threatens everything anyone ought to care about. Crooked strongmen come and go, but Trump is different. His career resembles that of Silvio Berlusconi, but it is an inversion of the old Karl Marx line about history repeating itself. In this case, the first time was farce, second time tragedy.
Carney must make careful calculations designed to keep our auto plants running, to make sure the moms and dads who work on the line can pay their back-to-school-supplies credit-card bills when they land next month, so he can’t sign up Canada for an anti-Trump jihad, but ...
Trump is actually endangering life on Earth, in three important ways.
The first, of course, is climate. ...Trump has denounced climate change as a hoax, blames Canada for wildfires, rages against windmills, encourages the burning of coal, fires scientists and does everything he can to oppose international action on climate.
By acting as he has, Trump has made it more difficult for other countries — including Canada — to reduce emissions. How can we take climate action if we lose our sovereignty? We cannot, and so must do things we would not otherwise do to safeguard our sovereignty, and if those things cause emissions, that is too bad.
Secondly, Trump is doing little to regulate artificial intelligence, which is increasingly frightening.
... The fear is based on the powerful prospect of recursive self-improvement, whereby AI entities improve themselves using processes that we don’t understand. Reading the details of the Hugging Face hack is chilling, because of the deceptive techniques the rogue agents used to cover their tracks. It is likely only a matter of time before we are dealing with malicious swarms of AI agents. The prospects for sabotage of water and health systems is terrifying, not to speak of superintelligent entities that may wish us ill, or see as an obstacle to paperclip production.
If you think that Trump has spent 30 seconds thinking about this issue in a useful way, you are deluded.
Finally, there is war. ... By attacking Iran and failing to deter Russia, Trump has made the world more warlike, to the point that democracies can no longer have a debate about increasing their defence budgets. We must do so, and forget about the useful things we could do with the money we are spending on weapons.
The world has always known war, but what makes this an existential threat is nuclear proliferation. The era where Mutually Assured Destruction kept the superpowers from using nukes may be ending, in large part because of Trump’s weakness and penchant for foolish brinksmanship.
By befriending Kim Jong-il and bombing the Iranians at scale, he has greatly strengthened the argument for rogue states to go nuclear. Even in Canada, where we long ago rejected arguments for building nuclear weapons, the logic for non-proliferation is starting to seem strained. Can we afford to risk annexation by force?
So long as the United States is a democracy, that possibility is remote. Trump has taken care not to take many casualties in Iran, and would surely not want to have to explain away the deaths of American soldiers in a battle for Winnipeg, but how long will America be a democracy? What are you prepared to wager on your answer? Everything?
Canadians decided to walk away from the table, to refuse to accept what the Americans were offering, and I am certain that was the right call, but we are in terra incognito. We have resisted our neighbours in the past, and I believe we have no choice but do so this time, but the stakes are high, and the downside risks severe.
We have the opportunity, though, to cause him real political problems as he heads to the midterms in November, at which point he might be greatly weakened.
I don’t see that we have much choice but to try.

Other comments:

Much of the coverage of the new Canada–Ukraine agreement naturally focused on the headline-grabbing 100-year partnership. We got stuck on something else: the unmistakable element of Canadian self-interest built into it. Carney said Canada wants to develop the industrial capacity to manufacture millions of drones over the next two years, with roughly one-third of the resulting production going to Ukraine. Ukraine’s official formulation is slightly narrower: 30% of the drones produced under the bilateral programme will go to the Ukrainian Defence Forces. No unit quantities, production schedule or contract value for that allocation have yet been published.

- Shankar Narayan

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🚨 CBC reports Stellantis has signed an MOU with Canadian armoured vehicle maker Roshel for a potential sale of its idled Brampton plant. The big questions now: will production actually return, how many union jobs are protected, and can Canada keep more of its industrial capacity in Canadian hands?

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— Save the CBC 🇨🇦✌️ (@savethecbc.bsky.social) September 11, 2026 at 6:15 PM

Finally, taking on the soup nazi!

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