And not just here… sigh… I really don’t want to do ‘interesting times’ again…
First up, the Brits-
The UK election is official, and it’s all over but the shouting — and finger-pointing. With only two parliamentary seats left to declare their vote totals, Labour has won 412 seats to the Conservatives’ 121. A handful of other parties and independent candidates claimed the remaining 115 seats.
Some of the Tories’ most conservative members lost their seats, including Jacob Rees-Mogg and former prime minister Liz Truss. The Tories lost every single seat in Wales. It was such a drubbing that experts predict that now-former PM Rishi Sunak will resign as head of the Conservative Party as early as Friday.
Full article, HERE from PJ Media
Next are the French-
Paris — Election results show French voters have chosen to give a broad leftist coalition the most parliamentary seats in pivotal legislative elections, keeping the far right away from power. Yet no party won an outright majority, putting France in an uncertain, unprecedented situation.
President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance arrived in second position. The far-right, led by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party, came in third — still drastically increasing the number of seats it holds in the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament.
Full article, HERE from CBS
And of course we have an ‘issue’ or three here…
The Democratic Party is in the midst of coping with echoing calls for President Biden to bow out of the presidential race over concerns that his mental acuity has slipped and that he’s unable to serve as president for another four years if he wins re-election.
As the party looks for potential replacements if Biden does in fact decide to conclude his political career, Vice President Harris sits atop the list of likely successors. Harris has a long history as a California liberal stalwart, serving as San Francisco’s district attorney in the early 2000s, then serving as the state attorney general under former Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown, and U.S. senator from the Golden State before her 2020 election as vice president.
Full article, HERE from Fox News
Soooo, three of the G7 are in the throes of political upheaval at the same time. Does anyone think China and Russia aren’t taking notes and figuring out what their options are?
Taiwan, Ukraine, other??? Iran making moves against Israel???
The list is long, varied, and chilling at the same time. And there is a G7/NATO summit in DC this week.
I really don’t have a clue what the administration’s stance with respect to NATO is, much less what our real relationship with Israel is.
All these ‘hot spots’, lack of leadership among the powers, and frankly, weak military leaders in all three countries makes me worry about what is coming before November, if not sooner.
Your thoughts?
And then there’s Japan which will have an election in (IIRC) September and Canada which is due to have one fairly soon too
I substacked thoughts about the US, France and UK
https://ombreolivier.substack.com/p/nailing-my-colours-to-the-mast?r=7yrqz
Canada:
Multiple possible dates for an upcoming election, listed from soonest to last-possible:
1. VARIABLE/UNLIKELY: Any time between now and October 20, 2025, should the sitting government choose to dissolve itself and call a snap election. This is valid constitutionally, but is unlikely as Trudeau has clearly expressed that he wants to stay the course and remain in power.
2. MOST LIKELY: October 20, 2025: Per the Canada Elections Act, this is the third Monday of October in the fourth calendar year following polling day for the last general election.
3. ALTERNATE DATES IN 2025 (if Bill C-65 is passed): Monday Oct 6, Monday Oct 13, Tuesday Oct 21, Monday Oct 27, Monday Nov 3
Trudeau’s government has proposed Bill C-65 (the “Electoral Participation Act”) which would allow for the two Mondays prior, two Mondays after, or the Tuesday immediately after the normal Monday for an election according to the current Elections Act. It has had its second of three readings in the House of Commons. The House is adjourned for the summer and will sit again on Monday September 19, 2024.
Trudeau is attempting to get C-65 passed so he can target “the next Monday” (Oct 27) because then a lot of his sitting Members of Parliament will have passed the date that they now get a lifelong pension once they leave Parliament.
His publicly facing reason to justify C-65 is to not have the election conflict with the observance of Diwali/Deepavali on Oct 20 (a Hindu festival of lights, which is NOT a national holiday in Canada.) File this one under: If you want to know the truth, follow the money and how much government oinkers love their lifelong sinecures.
4. UNLIKELY, BUT CONSTITUTIONALLY VALID: Voluntarily some time in the fifth year of the current session of Parliament. Forced by the Governor General: As of September 19, 2026. Per the Constitution, Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: Section 4(1): “No House of Commons and no legislative assembly shall continue for longer than five years from the date fixed for the return of the writs of a general election of its members.”
Historically, any government that has pushed out to “into its fifth year” suffers a big defeat once the election is called, except while at war when consistency and continuance are generally favoured by the electorate.
= = =
So basically your guess is as good as mine. Our law is a contradictory soft squishy mess in many ways, and we can’t even keep to a fixed date for our elections. Note that a sitting Parliament can always modify any existing law, so it is effectively not bound by existing law unless it chooses to be so. It is, however, bound by the Constitution except that the recent court finding that Trudeau violated the law by invoking the Emergency Act during the Trucker Protest ended up with absolutely no penalties or negative effect to the sitting government. As such, there really is no disincentive for the sitting government to not violate the Constitution again. Also the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a joke, but that’s an analysis/rant I’ll save for another day.
Final comment: That was a lot of explanation just for me to conclude, “My country is a joke.”
I think their elections are manipulated. Right gets elected to make people happy, starts to change things, left suddenly comes to power and stops those changes,
rinse, repeat.
And I think it’s the Globalists (as opposed to Nationalists) using a series of strategies to ensure effective control for their agenda, no matter who is running, or what party wins a given election, so long as its sufficiently compromised from within.
I’m sorry to point this out, but… we’ve been here before. Try a century or so ago, and the subsequent 10 years.
B: The right in England has been in power for years and has made no changes. They have, in fact, done everything in their power to block the needed changes.
OldNFO: This is how a parliamentary system works. We have a clear binary choice, the more leftist and the more rightist parties. We may not be happy but that’s the way it is. In a parliamentary system, however, all these parties compete which means that each party has a constituency. That constituency might or might not transfer. The left did a much better job of transferring their constituencies in order to prevent the right from winning. In France LePen’s party has a hard cap of support and the leftists took advantage of that. In Britain the Conservatives destroyed themselves but that support didn’t transfer to Farage’s party sufficiently to create a new conservative option, partly due to decades of media manipulation of opinion.
Israel taking out Iran with nukes is on the table. Israel is coming to the conclusion the USA isn’t a “staunch” ally, especially if another Democrat is elected President.
What has Israel done for us, that we should be their “staunch ally”?
Technology, innovation and iron dome for starters.
Okay, I’ll admit their Spike missile system is nice. Iron Dome is based on the Patriot system, but done right.
Copying and reselling US tech to China, Iran, and Russia isn’t exactly what a “staunch ally” should do.
I think that with the example of the results from England and France, we may be coming to the end of the “collapsing slowly” and approaching the “all at once” part of our interesting times to come.
Have your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark, prepare as you can, and hope for the best anyway.
Iran doesn’t need to act directly against Israel, just as the USA isn’t acting directly against Russia. That’s what proxies (Hezbolla/Ukraine) are for.
The Tories accomplished nothing but overseeing the expulsion of the English populace from most of London and installing an Indian as Prime Minister.
I agree that the sudden shift from Right to Left suggests “anomalies”, i.e. fraud.
Kamala Harris is not a Liberal or a Progressive. She is an opportunist. She can be trusted to sell-out to the highest bidder.
Keep your friends close and keep your enemies closer. Straight-blade screwdrivers with 8″ shanks will never be illegal. Nor will 12″ adjustable wrenches.
i and many others are beyond caring what is “legal” any more.
All- Interesting takes on it, and AG, thanks for the discussion on Canada. I was NOT aware of all the perturbations up there!!!
Y’welcome. When it comes to predicting how things happen up here with respect to any branch of government, just imagine “The Ministry of Silly Walks” from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and that will give you a surprisingly accurate bird’s-eye-view of things.
Political uncertainty and change makes things unstable. Bad actors take advantage of that instability leading to conflicts. WWIII is already underway at a low level. Expect it to ramp up.
There’s nothing new under the sun.
The Left/Right model of politics does not fit the reality.
The supposedly “Right” party in Britain got the boot because they did not ACT like the Conservatives they claimed to be. They did not fulfil their electoral promises. They did not follow their own policies.
People are frustrated and in a mood to punish.
I hate Socialism with a passion. I also hate the liars who claim to be “Right”, but are not prepared to engage in the major electoral, judicial , legislative and public-service reforms required to actually BE a “pro-freedom” Party.
They tell you what you want to hear, but if they never actually DO it, they are taking you for fools. They are not there to serve the People, but to win power and oppose the “other guy”.
People who tell you that you can have a free lunch….. don’t vote for them.
People who tell you that good things can be had at low cost…… don’t vote for them.
People who are focused on Parties, not Policies….. don’t vote for them.
Thoughts – Viva la revolution! Down with the political establishment! No Marxists Left Alive should be our rallying cry.
Several questions possible.
One is, how much do these political positions actually matter? NATO may have recently demonstrated that if a key nation’s leadership is incapacitated or hostile, but other people want the group to function enough, the group can be made able to continue to function.
Two: Does Russia have anything left to throw, no matter what opportunity that they see? They seem to have spent a lot on the last opportunity.
Three: Does the PRC? Yes, I know a lot of people talk about the PRC as the future. Some years back, I read an essay about signals out of a failing communist regime being impossible to analytical parse. Since, I’ve kept that in mind when ever I’m tempted to find a single rational action for the PRC’s actions. It is ruled by a seventy year old man, who claims to be the only one keeping the nation from ‘chaos’. He’s probably both a crazy nihilist, and also a bit starved when young. Seventy can be young in America, but may not be young where he is concerned. At a minimum, the PRC is stressed. It might have important choices left to it in the future, but we do not know that.
Four: Iran. That and North Korea are obviously possibilities, but I dunno. Iran is seemingly more confident, and active.
Five, counterargument is notion of Canada or Mexico as unstable PRC proxies. Disease warfare is maybe out, but in theory Canada could be decently effective when it comes to training and preparing terrorists.
I may be in broken record mode, but my general conclusion is that the folks who are clearly malicious may have serious issues with competence and reality testing, and I expect that will limit ability to do damage. So, yes, indicators are concerning, but some of those are being jiggered by people trying to agitate those folks who look at factors in combination.
In the first place, for some years, our indicators for ‘situation no worse than normal’ may have been broken, false negative for ‘things are working fine’. We were not checking the situation for ‘really bad chaos now?’, and that means that once we are, our tests have not been carefully curated to give an acceptable number of false positives.
If a group of six or eight countries each change senior political leadership every three to five years, it will not be rare to have two changing in the same year.
So, yes, we definitely have a recent history of surprising and concerning events. We definitely have reason to expect more surprises.
I don’t think you are getting emotional thinking about possibilities, so rechecking your assumptions (as you did here), is probably not costing you, and is a good way to stay in practice.
Bob…
I think I agree with you on much.
How many of the countries we are concerned about have a real civil war going on?
Party politics has been volatile ever since it was invented. Politics in a democracy – and America IS a democracy, regardless of what some try to claim – is going to be exactly as volatile as the electorate wants it to be. Like it or not, if the Government changes without major violence, then yeah, the system is working.
If the leader of the Opposition is still alive, still campaigning and not dodging bullets, then things could be a bloody sight worse. Trump is alive. Starmer is alive. Navalny is dead.
That should tell us something. So should the fact that we can even have this conversation without facing a 7-year sentence for dissing some “Dear Leader”.
The point about “working” being that there is no system that can be better than the population allows it to be. If the people insist on voting for clowns and monkeys, then the Government is going to look like a circus.
At times I think “So this is how a Roman centurion felt like during the collapse of the Empire.” Of course the barbarians hadn’t been invited into Rome nor was the Emperor in the pay of the Hun.
All- Thanks! Bob- NATO ‘is’ dependent on the leadership of those countries for funding…sigh