BC Ferries: Flawed Governance, Defective New Vessels, Missing Transparency
In CEO Jimenez’s rebuttal to my December 15 Times Colonist opinion piece, he claims that BC Ferries has strong governance and does not deploy defective vessels. I argue that the corporation’s “sustainable proposal” to secure significantly increased funding to avoid fare hikes exceeding 30% should be rejected until governance is reformed. Jimenez’s claim that governance has improved since the early 2000s is contradicted by ample evidence of a governance vacuum enabling BC Ferries to avoid transparency and accountability for wasting tax dollars and deploying defective vessels.
Although Jimenez claims BC Ferries values transparency, its history of intentionally avoiding transparency tells a different story. In 2003 BC Ferries campaigned for and was granted exemption from the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. In 2009 the FOI, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and Canadian Federation of Taxpayers appealed to the BC Comptroller General to review the effect of shielding the corporation from scrutiny and accountability. His report describes a “culture of secrecy and entitlement” that allowed executives to enrich themselves while imposing steep fare increases, cutting service, and inflicting economic damage on island residents. BC Ferries was then restored to the FOI Act in 2010.
However, the government, aided by the BC Ferry Commissioner and BC Ferry Authority, who are tasked with providing independent oversight, have systematically enabled BC Ferries to deny or heavily redact FOI requests to the present. Only one of 34 FOI requests for financial and performance data for the Denman Island cable ferry, for example, has been released. BC Ferries also redacted six pages of an eight-page decision paper released to the Transportation Standing Committee reviewing the $1 billion loan for the Chinese-built vessel contract. In an effort to keep details about this controversial purchase secret, a BC Ferries lawyer argued in Parliament that the Committee’s demand for FOI data was illegal and “outside of its constitutional authority.”
Although Bill 7, which was passed in 2022 providing the BC Ferry Authority power to issue binding resolutions, it has not filed a single resolution to mitigate the corporation’s pattern of denying FOI requests, filing misleading reports, and deploying defective vessels. The Commissioner has similarly failed in her overarching mandate “to balance the needs of customers and taxpayers while ensuring the corporation’s sustainability,” as proven by the corporation’s escalating debt and pattern of deploying unreliable vessels like the 1999 fast ferries that cost taxpayers $1 billion.
Protected from scrutiny, BC Ferries follows a predictable script when deploying defective vessels like the Denman Island cable ferry and the Quadra Island hybrids: it dismisses chronic breakdowns as “teething issues” that can be repaired, and engages in a system of denial and underreporting of failures that are strongly contradicted by internal records and customer complaints.
For ten years the Commissioner has accepted BC Ferries’ claim that the cable ferry provides service “on a par” with conventional vessels, despite her access to contradictory evidence such as the one set of released FOI data from deployment in 2016 to 2019 that included 80 pages of breakdowns due to five unresolved mechanical issues confirmed in the 2023 Anderson Review. This review also confirmed that the vessel costs more and runs slower than projected—$5.9 million annually, not $230 thousand.
The two Quadra hybrids reflect the same pattern of corporate denial, dismissal of evidence, and deflection. Statistics from 2021 to 2022, when the hybrids were launched, prove that the vessels were not designed for the Quadra route’s high winds: cancellations due to mechanical breakdowns increased from 0 to 93; weather-related cancellations increased from 4 to 167; and total cancellations increased from 6 to 334 in a single year. Despite the corporation’s claim the issues could be fixed, the Commissioner urged the corporation to replace and reroute the vessels. However, her acceptance of keeping the cable ferry for budget reasons for a tenth year of iffy service demonstrates her selective oversight.
Without transparency enabling public accountability and strong governance and consistent enforcement, BC Ferries will continue wasting tax dollars that could fund improvements in affordable housing and healthcare, and island communities will continue to suffer unreliable service that cripples their quality of life and economies.
Shucking Oysters: Warrior Diplomacy
Shucking Oysters: Warrior Diplomacy
By Alex Allen
Not since 2021 have I felt such existential dread about where we are heading. As the iconic bumper sticker warned us: If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention. Pick a verb: scared, confused – the future is not friendly. And if you think it is, then do tell me what pills you are taking or flavour of Kool-aid you are drinking.
Let’s look at the biggest elephant in the room. Last year: His tariffs sent the world’s economies floundering. He fired thousands of federal workers. He mocked justice with pardons for his criminal friends. He ordered masked agents to violently grab anyone that looked different. He ordered the National Guard into select cities fomenting fear and aggression. He cut funding to Ivy League universities to toe his ideological line. He sued the media for inflaming his ego. He has threatened annexing Canada, Greenland, and Panama. He has big plans for Europe and huge ones for the Middle East. He paved the iconic Rose Garden. He demolished part of the White House for his $400 million gilded ballroom. He renamed the Kennedy Center, the Trump Kennedy Center. In just six months he made over $3 billion through crypto and licensing deals. And this barely covers it.
And then mere moments into the New Year, in a brazen military operation, the “strongest and most fearsome military on the planet” kidnapped Venezuelan President Maduro and wife and then ceremoniously bombed the capital, Caracas. The couple are now facing charges for “narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices as well as conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the US.”
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a news conference, where he boasted that this “extremely successful operation should serve as warning to anyone who would threaten American sovereignty or endanger American lives.” Trump continued to gloat: “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”
But it’s not about national security. It’s about crude (pun unintended) oil. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars … and start making money for the country,” Trump said as he celebrated Maduro’s capture. What Trump wants is Venezuela’s oil fields. He’s fixated: “we built the Venezuela oil industry with American talent, drive, and skill, and the socialist regime stole it from us.”
Hyper-masculine Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, continued the rhetoric: “American warriors are second to none. The best in the world and the best of our country. What all of us witnessed … was sheer guts and grit, gallantry and glory of the American warrior … Our warriors are the elite of America.” And if we still didn’t get it, Hammerhead Hegseth reminded one and all: “This is America first. This is peace through strength and the United States War Department is proud to help deliver it.”
Dan “Razin” Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff followed with more lurid details. Also sharing his boss’s penchant for hyperbole, Caine gushed about “leveraging” their “unmatched intelligence capabilities” and how it was “an audacious operation that only the United States could do.” His closing remarks were most telling: “Our jobs are to integrate combat power so when the order comes, we can deliver overwhelming force at the time and the place of our choosing against any foe anywhere in the world.”
Maduro was not popular at home or abroad. Venezuelans everywhere are celebrating this moment, looking to return after more than a decade of economic mismanagement, corruption, and repression. After winning the election by a slim margin in 2013, he expelled US diplomats and accused them of poisoning the previous leader, Hugo Chavez. Maduro inherited absolute control over state institutions, including the military leadership, the Supreme Court, and the media. Following the election in 2018, Maduro was declared the unopposed winner, but many countries, including the US and Canada, would not recognize his presidency. He jailed opposition leaders and forced many others into exile. In 2024, Maduro was again elected the winner, this time under more questionable circumstances. All the while, Maduro’s wife held multiple high-ranking positions, such as attorney general and chief of parliament.
Sound familiar? Remember that Trump got three million less votes than his opponent and still won. And don’t forget the 32 felons Trump pardoned himself for, from falsifying hush payments to porn star Stormy Daniels to attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
When asked about opposition leader Maria Corina Machado (who stole Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize last year) he said “I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.” That alone, US State Department correspondent Tom Bateman wrote, “will signal to some in Venezuela, particularly Machado’s supporters, that Trump isn’t serious about shoring up Venezuela for a democratic or just future, but rather to plunder its oil wealth.”
Meanwhile, the interim Venezuelan leader, vice-president Delcy Rodríguez, who Trump has said will “temporarily run” the country, warned that “if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”
Prime Minister Carney’s initial glib response was that all parties respect international law. Later he added that Canada stands “by the Venezuelan people’s sovereign right to decide and build their own future in a peaceful and democratic society.”
Pierre Poilievre, who is married to a Venezuelan, was less nuanced: “Congratulations to President Trump for the arrest of the narco-terrorist and socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro, who should spend the rest of his days in prison.” He also suggested that González share the presidency with Machado.
According to a 33-page US National Security Strategy released in November, Trump officials say they are carrying out their national security strategy, which calls for American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere, asserting himself where and when he needs to. This has huge implications for Canada, particularly in terms of Arctic sovereignty, defence and security. In other words, peace through strength.
And here we are, apologetically attached to our impulsive conjoined twin. Even Trump’s Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair recently, that Trump has an alcoholic’s mentality – he thinks he can do anything he wants.
Trump did say that US military action could soon be coming to Colombia, Cuba, Greenland, Iran, Mexico, and Venezuela (again). In a recent Atlantic article, “The Fuck-Around-and-Find-Out Presidency,” the authors eloquently wrote: “Trump views many parts of this hemisphere as a rightful extension of his US sandbox, where he is free to snatch and grab what he pleases.” Will Canada be next?
This year will mark 250 years since the founding of the United States. As David Pratt wrote in The National, the mood surrounding such a significant anniversary will be more tense that celebratory. We will see more of the Trump effect, “shifting global alliances and the blurring of the boundary between war and peace.”
In an interview in December, former Liberal foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy said it best, when he voiced his concerns that Prime Minister Carney “is working on the basis that somehow we’re going to find ways to get along with the US. It’s like asking a serial killer to babysit your kids.”
All Good Things Must Pass
All Things Must Pass
by Book Magoo, Roving Reporter
Well that didn’t last. One didn’t have to be Nostradamus to see that the Free Shack was doomed the moment it got the heave-ho from Elkhaven and its curator hung up his uniform. Some were confused, others didn’t care, and there were those that openly wept and fretted over the future of the wee tin shed. Personally, I never had any interest in the thing. I was never naive enough to think that perhaps one day that box of mismatched mason jar lids and bottle caps I scored would reveal a twenty five thousand dollar limited edition Rolex Submariner that I could flash around the General Store like Jagmeet Singh at a union press conference, but that’s just me. I can imagine that some folks were able to snap up some pretty spiffy stuff…one person’s garbage is another person’s gold as they say. But based on recent events, one has to wonder if there was a massive blow-out sale on rose colored glasses somewhere. I recall a good many times when a frustrated Shane took to Facebook and proclaimed “That’s it, I’m done with this place for good!!” after some numpty decided to drop off a load of legless chairs along with paint cans from the middle ages and a leaky keg three quarters full of nuclear waste. I recall one instance where a couple of groups showed up at the same time and an argument ensued that in good old Denman fashion devolved into accusations of racism. But, the Free Shack was our version of the Klondike Gold Rush, with throngs of starry eyed dreamers heading down at dawn’s first light in hopes of finding that big nugget.
For all that is good and holy, let the Free Shack go. Just let it die with dignity and it would become legendary. Future generations could start a GoFundMe or apply for some frivolous government grant and conscript a sculptor to fashion a statue of Shane that could be erected at the gates of Elkhaven where all could gather and worship. It could be the Denman Island Mecca, (until some disgruntled group of self proclaimed anarchists deem it somehow oppressive and topple it in the name of progressive liberalism. Yay…..). To keep this going is inherently cruel and without purpose….. like some selfish family members that are keeping Mum alive on life support because it makes them feel better. Time to let go.
We are already blessed with a Free Store that is the envy of the world. Let that be enough.
The Lot 19 Affair
Gabriel Jeroschewitz, November 24th, 2025
The Lot 19 Affair
The Auction
The auction hall was not a hall at all, but a repurposed slaughterhouse, tiled in porcelain and echoing with the ghosts of things that once bled here. Mr. Sallow stood at the podium, a man the colour of old parchment, his mouth permanently shaped into a toothless parenthesis. The buyers waited in sugar-colored suits, clutching brass paddles polished by their own sweaty palms.
Lot 19 — the dolls — were wheeled in on a steel cart, side by side, their detachable heads arranged neatly in velvet-lined trays like rare mangoes. The buyers cooed and hissed.
Each buyer got a minute alone with the dolls before bidding. That minute was a theatre of grotesque desire:
- Lady March, who likened herself to a “collector of sensations,” tapped the glass ribs of one doll and murmured that she would fill them with goldfish.
- The Brewer insisted he would pour stout into their clay stomachs and drink “from the source.”
- Mr. Chalk, who smelled like mothballs and thunder, caressed Lot 19’s blue-painted shoulders and claimed the chips in the paint were “music to the touch.”
When bidding began, the room became a slow, obscene pulse — each number called felt like a heartbeat in reverse, taking life instead of giving it. Mr. Sallow watched them feed on the fantasy.
Lot 19 was moved to the back of Mr. Sallow’s estate, an architectural mistake of corridors that looped back into themselves. In the sunroom, they were posed just so: elbows bent, knees spread “for symmetry.” Their clay skin was dusted every morning by a servant named Harp, who never looked them in the eye. Sallow said eye contact was “bad for the art.”
The dolls quickly learned Sallow’s habits. He never touched them with his hands — only with objects. A silver ladle to lift a chin. A feather duster to tickle the hollow between their thighs. He treated desire like calligraphy, never direct, always an ornate flourish. His guests came often, each one encouraged to “interpret” Lot 19 in their own way.
Some painted new mouths on the dolls.
Some sewn pockets into their stomachs.
One man replaced a head entirely with a birdcage, then filled it with finches until the sound drove everyone insane.
They accepted it silently. After all, art does not interpret itself.
The Anatomy That Watches
By the third month of captivity, Lot 19 learned to turn its parts against the buyers. The glass ribs could reflect light like blades. Detachable heads could roll like grenades, their hollow eyes distracting even the most fevered collector. Clay skin, when wetted, could dissolve just enough to smear across a hand, leaving a faintly burning mark.
The first incident was with Mr. Chalk — he reached for one doll’s head and found his fingers caught in a sudden fissure in her neck; the clay closed around him like a trap. He left with two fingers less than he’d come with, muttering about “texture failure.”
The dolls bided their time. They learned that the guests drank heavily — milk cordials, blood wine — until their sight blurred and their movements slowed. They noticed Sallow liked to leave doors unlocked during rainstorms, believing no art would risk getting wet. That would be their opening.
It happened during a downpour that made the gardens look like a drowned city. Sallow had invited his “most loyal buyers” for a private showing. Lightning pooled in the glass ribs of the dolls, making them look like lanterns.
When the buyers approached, Lot 19 turned gentle actions into violence — heads rolled underfoot, toppling men in slippery arcs; paint flakes flew like hornets into eyes; blue clay smeared into mouths until speech became choking.
Lady March fell backward into a fountain; The Brewer was found gagging on a shard of rib; Mr. Chalk tried to flee but slipped on a head laughing in the rain.
The dolls moved fast. They could bend in ways bones couldn’t, slide through corridors like spilled ink. Out of the open garden gate they went, their laughter carrying over the storm like music from somewhere both holy and profane.
The next morning, Sallow’s guests searched the grounds. They found only the trays of heads — empty, damp, smelling faintly of moonlight. Under the skirts of the remaining display mannequins were nests of maggots, writhing like a pale alphabet no one wanted to read.
Rumours spread. Some claimed the dolls had dissolved into rainwater and tasted faintly of salt. Others swore they saw a procession of blue-painted women walking along the riverbank, carrying their heads tucked under their arms like relics.
In truth, Lot 19 swam to a place only they could find — a silver lake under a milk-colored moon. They waited there, bodies pressed together, clay warming in the night. They were still art, but no longer for sale.
One doll — her name lost to auctions — fell in love with another in that lake. It was not the sudden, fiery kind, but a slow binding of seams. They polished each other’s paint, shared their detachable faces like masks, and whispered in the language of unowned things.
What they loved most was the refusal. The deliberate absence of buyers, of voices calling them “wife, whore, mistress, maid, mother.” In their own mythology, they were creatures carved by accident, bred in captivity, freed by rain—lovers in exile.
They danced on the moonlit shore until the wind carried their breath away, becoming stories told by old river women:
“The doll people are gone, but if you stand quiet enough, you’ll feel”
Letter to the Editor – Oakley Rankin
Colonial History
The Russian Empire today comprises nearly double the land mass of the United States and Canada combined. It is properly called an Empire as the vast majority of its territory was never home to indigenous Russians; it was taken from the peoples who originally inhabited it. It makes up one-sixth of the Earth’s landmass, historically third in size behind the Mongol and British empires but far larger than the U.S., Spanish and Portuguese Empires expanding at roughly the same time. It was an Empire rationalized on the basis of the myth of ‘Great Russia’ in which the conquered were viewed as as proto-Russians united by an mythology of shared culture which was not bounded by geographical borders—a Russian version of U.S. ‘Manifest Destiny’ or the Chinese ‘Great State’. Operating from the Grand Duchy of Moscow, Ivan III was the first to style himself Czar (1462-1505) and to take on the expansion of what was then a small kingdom centred on Moscow. From 1462 until 1911 Moscow fought 113 wars of expansion, winning most and creating at its height a Russian Empire stretching from Europe to the border of British Columbia. From the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has been involved in 14 more wars not only with Ukraine but also with Georgia, Moldova, Tajikistan, Ingushetia, Dagestan and Chechnya—this last could be seen as a precursor to Israel’s ‘war’ on Gaza as the capital Grozny was levelled to much the same extent as Gaza is currently.
So why do numerous pundits and analysts dwell exclusively on U.S. actions through NATO as the primary reasons for the Russian invasion of Ukraine while foregoing any discussion of Russian motivations for war or the relative importance of both? In the best traditions of Empire building Russia has demonstrated all the actions and policies—removal of populations, colonial settlement, massacre, racist policies for the conquered and recurring invasion of neighbouring polities—without any need of external motivation. In this they have recapitulated the actions of Romans, Ottomans, Mongols, British and the United States as the latter expanded from Atlantic to Pacific. In the 19th Century both the U.S. and Russia ran roughshod over indigenous populations; stories of lonely cavalry men at Fort Apache could easily apply to Russian forces on frontier duty at the Holy Cross Fortress on the Sulak River.
If reputable analysts such as Jeffery Sachs, David Gibbs, and Robert H. Wade criticize the U.S. for its actions toward Russia and its use of NATO to amplify them, all in the context of provoking Russia into its invasion of Ukraine, they are doing us a disservice by not placing U.S. provocation in the context of Russian ambition. As these writers provide no discussion of domestic Russian motivation for the war it is evident that the arguments put forward are directed toward domestic strife in the U.S. rather than elucidating the motivations for the invasion of the Ukraine. A professional historian such as Gibbs and a scholar of Global Political Economy such as Wade must surely know that U.S. provocation is front-loaded by Putin to disguise his own motivations for invasion. Recognizing this they can only be taking the U.S. to task for its often misbegotten policies and actions in order to influence domestic policy. For the U.S. actions they detail are factors in Russian motivation but by no stretch of anyone’s imagination should they be cast as primary ones. There is no doubt that NATO was created as a response to the Soviet ‘Red Menace’ but without NATO Russia’s expansionist wars would still have taken place just as they did for centuries before NATO existed. To claim NATO as a primary motivation for Putin only indicates the writer is either oblivious to Russian history or is writing for domestic political consumption alone. History shows clearly that Russian rulers have never needed any external motivation for colonial conquest: the Ukrainian war is the latest act in Russia’s colonial expansion and has been undertaken completely for domestic reasons. Most tellingly you might ask yourself why Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, countries formerly controlled by Russia, are now all members of NATO. Was their primary motivation the Russian devil they knew or the U.S. devil they were wary of? The answer seems obvious.
Failure to weigh Russian motivation gives a pass to Putin’s autocracy and lends support to the growing belief in the U.S. that democracy has failed and it is time to consider the advantages of an autocratic leader—let’s forget this waffling, democratic consensus failure and get a strong leader to drain the swamp. It can be argued that some form of autocracy is humanity’s default organizing principle and Russia’s centuries of imperial expansion are one of the best arguments for its practice—within the past month a Russian friend has yet again assured me that the Russian people are unsuited for democratic governance and that an autocrat is the only power they will accept. But we must be extremely careful in using autocracy to call out faults in democracy; autocracy by any definition has no place for citizen consent. While is is legitimate to lay out U.S. actions and motives towards Eastern Europe, to do so in the context of the Ukrainian war without weighing them against Russian motivation for the war is disingenuous at the least and mendacious at the worst.
Further Reading.
Russia’s Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire / Michael Khodarkovsky Characterizing the colonial history of Russian conquest Khodarkovsky writes “On the one side was Christian Russia, a military-bureaucratic state, with urban centres and a dynamic agricultural-industrial economy. On the other were various non-Christian societies with kinship-based social organizations and static, overwhelmingly nomadic-pastoral economies.” Sound familiar?
To Run the World / Sergey Radchenko. Soviet aggression, Stalin to Gorbachev.
Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right / Quinn Slobodian Outlines the rise in the U.S. of autocratic political theory and the claimed failure of democracy.
The Fourth Political Theory / Aleksandr Dugin Dugin is Putin’s political theorist. In this book he dismisses liberalism, communism, and fascism in favour of his new political construction based on ‘ethnos’ as a ‘community of language, religious belief, daily life, and of sharing resources and efforts; as an organic entity’. (Wikipedia). Dugin’s major work on Eurasianism as the enemy of Atlanticism is not available in English but there is much discussion of it on the Internet; you can start with Wikipedia and go from there.
Oakley Rankin, Hornby Island
——————
Oakley Rankin posits that academics such as United Nations advisor Professor Jeffrey Sachs and others who want an end to the U.S.- NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and no further NATO expansion, ignore important historical context from 400 years ago in Eurasia. It is Mr. Rankin who is ignoring the most significant contexts in the history of Russia and Ukraine, and the Cold War with the U.S. and NATO.
Russia was the Eastern Front, the largest and deadliest theatre of WW2 in Europe, where the vast majority of Nazi ground forces were destroyed, defeating the German army’s offensive capabilities and forcing them to retreat toward Berlin. The Russian Army ultimately captured the German capital in May 1945. There were a total of 27 million dead Russian soldiers and civilians in their effort to defeat Hitler and the German Nazis.
Ukrainian ethno-nationalist allies of the Nazis murdered thousands of Jews and Poles and Roma peoples during that time, the same ideology that dominates power in Western Ukraine today. Right Sector, Svoboda, and the Azov Nazis control much of the corrupt Ukrainian regime, armed and funded by NATO in an attempt to expand NATO and its nuclear weapons to Russia’s border. This is NATO’s proxy war against Russia.
The U.S asserted that Soviet Russians putting nuclear weapons in Cuba represented the “red line” of an existential threat, leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it is absurd to expect Russia to accommodate NATO’s nuclear weapons on its borders. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the peace dividend was supposed to be an end to the Cold War. The U.S. and NATO have broken their commitment not to expand.
The most recent context that Oakley Rankin is missing, is that Ukrainian leader Zelenskyy was elected in a landslide victory on a campaign platform of peace with Russia. Immediately following Russia’s invasion of Eastern Ukraine, there were peace negotiations in Istanbul in April of 2022 that were agreed to in principle, but the signing of the deal was scuttled by NATO, forcing Zelenskyy to capitulate. The proxy war went on.
These views do not represent support for any state actor or their leaders, but rather an intellectually honest anti-war accounting. We cannot rely on corporate or state funded media to report honestly on these issues, and anyone who dissents from them is smeared as pro-Russian. The NATO propaganda, and the arming and financing of this proxy war, including by Canada, represents the greatest threat to sustaining civilization.
Keith Porteous, Associate Editor
Monster Hunters ch.2
The giant man dragged Ben to the janitors closet to talk to him. Ben now got a good look at him. He had a long beard that was fastened with several elastic bands, his hands were as big as frying pans and had a head the size of an exercise ball. “Why did you do that?” He shouted, “Why?” Ben was scared that this stranger was yelling at him. He didn’t know why either. “What did I do?” asked Ben. “The man had a look of disbelief on his face. “What do you mean what did I do?” You used one of your wishing coins on a stupid hoodie!” Ben didn’t know what the man was saying. “What’s a wishing coi…”Why did you do it!” Ben was getting scared now. Ben started to run. He stopped. He didn’t know if he could trust this man out from the closet. “Wait! Ben! I’ll tell you what wishing coins are!” He somehow found himself walking back to the closet.”Ok!” said Ben,” tell me what they are. “Wishing coins are only used in a total emergency,” said the man, “Let’s say I was about to die. I could wish to be twenty years younger, and I would still be alive! “So, you can wish for anything?” asked Ben.”Yep, anything!” repeated the man.”So… I wished for a sweater, and I got it.” said Ben in deep thought. man.”Why did you do that?” asked Ben. Then Ben thought of a question that he wanted to ask the man first: “Why are you here?” He asked. The man whispered, “II am here, to tell you that you are a… Monster Hunter.” Ben’s expression turned to shock.” And what exactly does a monster hunter do?” He asked. “SSSHHHHH!” The man exclaimed, “Don’t say it too loud, these closet walls are thin.” They sat in silence for thirty long seconds. Finally, Ben spoke up; ” Is being a monster hunter a bad thing?” “Oh, no Ben,” said the man, “In fact, you are one of the most gifted mortals in the human world!” Ben was already shocked enough, but this was too much. “I’m sorry but I must get to class… What’s your name?” “Robbie.” The man exclaimed. He didn’t have the same aggressive look on his face as he did before. Just then, his friend Johny entered the cramped closet. He was followed by a girl who looked to be their age. Ben expected that Johny and the girl would be disturbed by what was going on, but they both remained surprisingly calm. “Thanks Robbie.” said Johnny, ” Should we tell him?” “No.” replied Robbie. ” We’ll wait until we get back to headquarters.” Ben had no idea what was going on and, now that his best friend was in the middle of it, he didn’t know what to do. “C’mon Ben, we should get going.” said Johnny. “What’s going on, Johnny!?” yelled Ben. He had to know. Who were the Monster Hunters? What did they want from him? Why was Johnny in on everything? And how he was so special to them. “We’ll explain everything when we get to our home base.” said Johnny. Ben stayed silent. He knew that he could not question it any further. They all stepped out of the closet, Robbie in the lead with Ben following and Johnny and the girl in the back. Soon they were behind the school. It had been hard to walk between the normal hallway buzz and chatter. “So, Ben, do you know how to light-travel? “What do you think?” replied Ben with a wild look on his face. “I’ll take that as a no, then.” Robbie fished out something from his pocket. It looked like a small glass world map. “These teleport someone to anywhere in the world.” exclaimed Robbie. ” All I must do is tell it where I want to go. Now, Ben understood that this world of Monster Hunters really existed. “TO MONSTERSCHOOL!” shouted Robbie. Ben was not expecting the name of the school to sound like they were training monsters, but he shoved that thought aside. He had bigger things to worry about. And he was still as confused as ever. It had all happened so fast. The unknown man. The unknown girl. And Johnny.. What was with him? But his thoughts were not as fast as the bright flashes of light enveloping the four of them. Not even a second later, everything turned black. And they disappeared.
The US Empire Needs Men Like Trump
The US Empire Needs Men Like Trump
If you were wondering why the US establishment was so much more chill about Trump becoming president this term than they were the first time around, you’re watching the reason now. The powers that be were assured that he’d carry out longstanding imperial agendas like kidnapping Maduro, bombing Iran and overseeing a final solution to the Palestinian problem, and they trusted him to carry out those plans.
The MAGA narrative that the establishment hates Trump because he’s fighting the Deep State has never been true; there were certain factions within the US imperial power structure which disliked Trump, but that was only because he was not a proven commodity like Hillary Clinton and they didn’t trust him to be a reliable steward of the empire. Trump proved that he could be trusted with his advancement of longtime swamp monster agendas throughout his first term, and he plainly did enough during his time out of office to assure his fellow empire managers that he would do even more if re-elected.
The empire needs its skillful orators and apologists like Obama, but it also needs its iron-fisted overt tyrants like Trump. It needs good cop presidents to manufacture global consensus and expand US soft power, and it also needs bad cop presidents to inflict the hard power abuses the good cops can’t get away with. Both are essential components to the operation of the imperial machine.
Cuba for example has been a socialist island nation off the coast of the United States for generations, because the US hasn’t been able topple its government by its usual means. All the standard CIA assassination ops, proxy warfare and economic blockades were unsuccessful, and there’s been no national or international support for sending US boots on the ground to regime change a small country that poses no military threat. But a last-term bad cop president like Trump has options at his disposal that would be off the table for good cop presidents.
US empire managers are discussing this openly.
“If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned, at least a little bit,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio after Maduro’s capture.
“Cuba is ready to fall,” Trump told the press on Sunday next to a delighted Lindsey Graham. “Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall. I don’t know if they’re going to hold out. But Cuba now has no income. They got all of their income from their Venezuela, from the Venezuelan oil. They’re not getting any of it. And Cuba is literally ready to fall.”
“You just wait for Cuba,” Graham added. “Cuba is a Communist dictatorship that’s killed priests and nuns, they preyed on their own people. Their days are numbered. We’re gonna wake up one day, I hope in ’26, in our backyard we’re gonna have allies in these countries doing business with America, not narcoterrorist dictators killing Americans.”
“Donald Trump will have done something that’s eluded America since the fifties: deal with the Communist dictatorship 90 miles off the coast of Florida,” Graham said on Fox News. “I can’t wait till that day comes. To our Cuban friends in Florida and throughout America, the liberation of your homeland is close.”
The Beltway swamp was saying this well before Trump’s Venezuela assault. In October, Senator Rick Scott told 60 Minutes that if Maduro is removed “it’ll be the end of Cuba,” saying “America is gonna take care of the southern hemisphere and make sure there’s freedom and democracy.”
Trump’s blatant smash-and-grab violation of international law in Venezuela wouldn’t have worked for a president who’s trying to put a nice guy face on the US empire, but for a wealthy reality TV star who’s comfortable playing the WWE heel, it’s opened up potential power grabs that have been eluding the imperialists for decades.
When the news broke that Trump had attacked Caracas I was working on an article about his warmongering with Iran which I had to abandon to focus on the new development. The president had announced on Truth Social that if any of the people protesting in Iran are killed, “the United States of America will come to their rescue,” adding, “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”
Prior to that Trump had confirmed to the press that the US would attack Iran if it tried to rebuild its missile program, saying in a joint news conference with Benjamin Netanyahu that “I hope they’re not trying to build up again because if they are, we’re going have no choice but very quickly to eradicate that buildup.”
To be clear, the president is not talking about attacking Iran if it tries to rebuild its nuclear facilities or construct a nuclear weapon. He’s talking about Iran’s conventional ballistic missile program. The United States is saying that Iran simply is not allowed to defend itself in any way, shape or form, and that if it tries to rebuild its ability to do so it will be attacked again.
So they’re clearly just making up excuses to bomb Iran and waiting for something to stick.
Senator Graham recently tweeted a photo of himself grinning with the president, who was holding a hat which said “MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN”. You can pretty much determine how warlike the US empire is from day to day by looking at the expression on Lindsey Graham’s face, and lately he’s been looking positively ecstatic.
Trump used to slam warmongers like Graham, building a huge part of his presidential 2016 campaign around contrasting himself with their disastrous foreign policy platforms. Now that he doesn’t have a re-election to posture for they’re best friends, with Graham proclaiming that “Trump is my favorite president” because “we’re killing all the right people and lowering your taxes”.
January 2029 is still a long way off, and we’re seeing every indication that Trump is going to be making Lindsey Graham smile for years to come.
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