How Goes The Trade War?

I can't help it, I've been chuckling for days about Trump renaming Lake Ontario:

“If you think about it, we have a gulf and we have a lake. Now, all we need is an ocean. So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific,” Trump said.

Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said New York would be defying Trump’s wishes on renaming the lake that hugs its northern border.

“New York won’t be calling it that,” Hochul declared on X.

Carney also rejected the rebrand, saying that “the name is more than 400 years old” and “comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big.’”

“We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms,” he tweeted. “Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always.”

The prime minister broke off trade talks with the US on Friday and claimed that “America is trying to break us so that they can own us,” but that so long as he was in charge it would “never, ever happen.”

Trump is, of course, trolling Carney, and Carney's reaction is predictably Canadian-huffy. The problem I see for Canada is severalfold. First, even Carney in the quote above is tacitly acknowledging that any substantial change in the US-Canada tariff balance would seriously harm Canada, but that balance is inevitably going to expire.

Second, Canadian anti-US sentiment is primarily in the eastern part of the country, and it's based on the tradition that loyalists were forced to flee to Canada after the US revolution. But this has never been as strong in the western provinces, and in addition, Canada is deliberately diluting the traditional population by importing immigrants, primarily from India:

Canada has a long history of immigration. Millions of people from all over the world have chosen, and continue to choose, Canada as their new home. In 2021, more than 8.3 million people, or almost one-quarter (23.0%) of the population, were, or had ever been, a landed immigrant or permanent resident in Canada. This was the largest proportion since Confederation, topping the previous 1921 record of 22.3%, and the highest among the G7.

Given that the population of Canada continues to age and fertility is below the population replacement level, today immigration is the main driver of population growth. If these trends continue, based on Statistics Canada's recent population projections, immigrants could represent from 29.1% to 34.0% of the population of Canada by 2041.

Old-fashioned anti-American rhetoric won't work with this group. Beyond that, anti-woke comic Ben Bankas, Canadian born but now a US resident, routinely asks his Canadian audiences how many are trying to emiograte to the US; typically, just about the whole room raises its hands. This is another group that anti-US rhetoric won't sway.

I got to know quite a number of the old-fashioned style Canadians in my younger years, including a family that nearly became my in-laws. The condition that they weren't Americans was a major part of their identity. Our beer isn't like American beer. The Americans like Las Vegas. The Americans have to have air conditioning. The Americans are violent The Americans didn't want to pay the bill for the service the UK did in fighting the French in the French and Indian War/War of the Spanish Succession, so they held the Boston Tea Party.

This was even harder for my almost-in-laws to justify: they'd moved from Canada to the US to get a higher standard of living, which was a matter you couldn't bring up with them. The parents and their older children had been born in Canada, and although they'd been down here for some years, they continued to congratulate themselves for being Canadian. The problem was their youngest daughter, who was born in the US. That poor girl affected the most Canadian vocabulary and speech of any in the family and was loudest in her denunciation of Americans. Somehow this drove the family dynamic and formed her personality.

I just don't see how you can sustain a national identity by saying you aren't like Americans, especially if your official policy is to expand the population via immigration -- many of those immigrants chose Canada as Plan B, when the US was Plan A, and they'll continue to try to get to the US.

There's something delusional about Mark Carney and something deeply unhealthy about Canada.

Canada's Moral Equivalent Of War

On Tuesday, I linked to a paper at Ottawa's Carleton University site that seems to provide a good outline of Canadian policy since Justin Trudeau's reported 2024 remarks to Trump that a 25% auto tariff would mean "the end of Canada". The paper's basic point is that the US and Canada are effectifvely at war, because the US is already implementing strategies that will mean a takeover of Canada:

The threat of the U.S. relying on military coercion to control a NATO ally has become front-page news in Canada and elsewhere, suggesting that Canadians are deeply concerned about this issue. However improbable a war with America might be, the reality is that the U.S. already has in place a number of strategies that can and will be leveraged to its advantage to achieve its strategic objectives.

These levers of influence fall within the grey zone of conflict and render the need to formally occupy Canada redundant. The grey zone refers to coercive statecraft that operates between war and peace, using ambiguity, incrementalism, and unconventional tactics to achieve strategic objectives without triggering full-scale military responses.

But the point that's left unsaid is that Canada isn't capable of a military response:

Canadian military chiefs have wargamed a US invasion and concluded that they would be overpowered in only two days.

. . . The invasion modelling was first reported in The Globe and Mail, which cited two unnamed senior government officials. They said they believed it unlikely that Trump would order an invasion of Canada.

. . . Carney, in his speech at Davos, said the US-led world order was enduring a “rupture”. His country had benefited from the old “rules-based international order”, he said, but must adapt to the new reality.

“Call it what it is: a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion,” he said.

Canada, which he labelled a “middle power”, must move with the times, he said. “Middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”

The speech was not well received by Trump. “Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, they should be grateful also,” the US president said in a speech on Wednesday. “I watched their prime minister yesterday, he wasn’t so grateful. But they should be grateful.

“Canada lives because of the United States, remember that, Mark, next time you make your statements.”

Elsewhere, that report suggests that Canada could rely on other "middle powers" like the UK and France if a military response were called for. At least as it applies to the UK, good luck. But Carney and Ontario Premier Doug Ford have inserted wartime rhetoric into the discussion:

"We cannot accept what they've offered, and we will not give what they've asked," Carney said on Saturday in Ottawa, adding that the United States 'asked too much and offered too little.'

The prime minister revealed that the U.S. had issues with Canada's subsidies for French culture; the prevalence of French-language media online and even the requirement to have bilingual labels on products sold in Canada.

"It was unacceptable right from the start, but the Americans kept trying and trying and we said no," Carney said. "Ultimately it's simple. That was never on the table for Canada and it would not have been acceptable to Canadians."

. . . Ontario Premier Doug Ford welcomed Carney's decision to abandon negotiations and insisted Canada would win a trade war with the U.S. because Canada is united and prepared for a fight.

"I'm glad he didn't sign that deal because it was a bad deal," Ford said in Toronto on Saturday. "It was a bad deal for Ontario. It was a bad deal for the auto sector, the steel sector and the manufacturing sector."

The premier said Canada needs to inflict pain on the U.S. to remind the Trump administration that Canada is its best customer and should be treated as such.

The U.S. team also wanted to introduce measures into the pact that would significantly undermine Canada's sovereignty, the prime minister said.

Conservative Treehouse reports on a CBC interview of US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer:

Most Americans have no idea that Canadian media is controlled by the Canadian government; it’s what they call “cultural protection” where the rules and regulations of permissible speech are controlled by govt regulators and media are subsidized by govt. The overall objective is to control information and censor viewpoints that might be averse to the interests of the Canadian govt. That’s why most Canadians have no concept of granular details on policy matters; they just don’t get the information.

In this interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), U.S Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is discussing the trade conflict and breakdown with Canada’s version of Baghdad Bob, Rosemary Barton. I’m a little surprised the CBC would even entertain the discussion. However, as noted in the past few days there is increasing skepticism amid Canadians about who and what actually blew up the trade talks. Canadians are starting to show signs of suspicion; enter Ms. Barton on behalf of the Canadian government to try and control things.

USTR Jamieson Greer answers the questions in a most unfortunate manner; meaning, he told the truth. Greer outlined exactly why he suspects the trade talks broke down, and it has nothing to do with economics or trade, it’s all politics on the Canadian side. As Greer noted, there was no change to the trade agreement between President Trump and Prime Minister Carney’s lengthy phone call on Tuesday, and the Canadian decision to walk away on Friday.

Canadian skepticism about Carney's anti-American rhetoric precedes the latest trade breakdown:

With the United States and Canada presently dancing around trade negotiations that will have consequential outcomes for both countries, any public statements issued by the countries’ leaders should themselves be considered a negotiating tactic.

Hence, it was a bit surprising to see Mark Carney release an extended video address in which he declared Canada’s historical ties with the United States to be a source of national weakness in need of correction. As if to drive the point home, he pulled out an action figure—excuse me, “figurine”—of Sir Isaac Brock, the British army general charged with defending Upper Canada from the United States during the War of 1812[.]

. . . This agonistic position toward Canada’s neighbour and most important trading partner has prompted accusations of either hypocrisy or expediency—hypocrisy because Carney (and frankly many Laurentian elites) retains strong personal ties with the United States; expediency because many suspect the PM is cynically relying upon this oppositional rhetoric to distract from growing economic problems at home, largely unrelated to American tariffs.

But this is not the first strong statement Canada’s leader has issued when it comes to the United States. He both diagnosed and endorsed a changing world order in his acclaimed speech at Davos and repeatedly referred to the necessity of “fighting” on Canada’s behalf. It is worth considering that he is quite sincere. One cannot help wondering at the alacrity and persistence with which the PM has pursued this approach: How much is a response to ongoing events and how much was already predetermined?

But why has Canada begun to speak so openly about the need to "fight" the US to protect Canada's "sovereignty"? I asked Chrome AI mode, "How common was Canadian rhetoric on the need to fight the US between 1860 and 1960?" It answered,

Between 1860 and 1960, Canadian rhetoric regarding the need to fight the United States shifted drastically from a widespread, existential necessity to an outdated, strictly classified formality, before disappearing entirely into peaceful economic and military integration.

Carney's position is clearly that things have changed. But what's changed? On one hand, Canadian forces stormed Juno Beach on June 6, 1944, while UK forces stormed Gold and Sword Beaches. Neither the UK nor Canada could remotely repeat that effort now. At the same time, if in the past a US president cogitated invading Canada, he might have the British Empire and the Royal Navy to contend with. That's changed.

The root cause is the precipitous decline of British prestige. In the 2000s, the "Anglosphere" was a popular concept. No longer. Part of the problem is that official policy in both Canada and the UK has been to dilute native British and Canadian culture with heavy migration. In part due to this, the UK in particular has been reeling from repeated "national embarrassments", and King Charles will never have his mother's prestige. More important, though, Carney recognizes the Canadian armed forces can't protect Canada from economic reality. So he has to talk big and hope nobody notices the small stick.

Details Emerge On Canada Trade Negotiation Breakdown

Let's recall that a week ago,

President Donald Trump late Tuesday stateside paused imposing 50% tariffs on certain Canadian imports, shortly before the duties were set to kick in at midnight.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that this was “based on the fact that Canada and the U.S.A., subject to the finalization of documents, have a DEAL!”

This announcement comes after Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney held trade talks on Tuesday.

In his post, Trump also suggested that the Keystone XL pipeline could be “awoken from the grave!” The pipeline refers to an extension of a pipeline system in Canada and the United States.

as of yesterday,

The [Canadian] government announced counter-tariffs on American goods worth about $27.6 billion on Tuesday, in retaliation for U.S. tariffs on Canada that came into effect on the weekend after trade talks broke down.

The Canadian measures, which are set to come into effect on Sept. 8, will affect a range of products including seafood, furniture and tools.

Ottawa also unveiled a $7.5 billion support package to help Canadian workers and businesses weather the trade war with the U.S.

In response, U.S. President Donald Trump again hit out at Canada, saying he wants to change the name of Lake Ontario to "Lake America" and accusing Mark Carney of lying when the prime minister said the rejected U.S. trade proposal would have threatened Canada's French-language regulations.

Later Tuesday, the White House released a statement titled "President Trump Is Finally Ending Canada’s Free Ride" that listed what it described as "Canadian abuse" of its trade relationship with the U.S.

The details of the breakdown in talks are slowly starting to emerge:

This gives the game away.

To Carney, building a pipeline to export Alberta oil is a burden, something he needs to be convinced to do by America. They have to give him something to do it.

Alberta's interests don't matter. Alberta is simply a bargaining chip. https://t.co/vfPK6WVmof

— Ezra Levant 🍁🚛 (@ezralevant) August 25, 2026

Conservative Treehouse has many more details:

There are many people in Canada demanding to see the rough draft proposals of the U.S-Canada trade agreement so they can judge for themselves the issues that Carney claimed were irreconcilable. For those people this interview today by Canadian Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc will only embolden those requests.

. . . Essentially, it boils down to four issues. !1) Removal of tariffs on Canadian assembled Semi-Trucks. (2) U.S. streaming services writing code for “search engines” in the French language. (3) Canada demanding 5% of gross revenues from U.S. tech platforms, and the last one is silly because it already exists: (4) the U.S. having a right to reject a trade deal made by Canada with a non-market economy, ie. CHINA.

. . . Canada wanted tariffs on Big Rigs removed. The U.S. said no.

The reason is simple. Big Rigs assembled/built in Canada are falling apart in the USA. Why? Because they are full of cheap Chinese component goods and parts that wear out quickly. The U.S. wants two things on this issue. Either: (1) Make them in the USA, or (2) stop using cheap Chinese component parts. The parts that Canada are using are not even available in the USA because we tariff and reject them, so why should we accept them when Canada installs them? Either quit using Chinese parts (hence, the trade alignment against Chinese imports), or accept a tariff equal to the rate we would apply if the product was coming directly from China.

♦The Stupid French Language thing. The French language stuff was an ancillary aspect where the Canadian Cultural Police were demanding that all U.S. streaming platforms (YouTube, Netflix etc.) must have search engines using the French language so Canadian users can search for stuff to watch using the French language. A ridiculous issue that was not part of the trade discussion, but Mark Carney saw political value in blowing up the issue.

♦Intellectual Property. Canada was demanding 5% of U.S. tech platform gross revenue (not profit, gross), they call it a tax. Canada then uses the “tax revenue” to subsidize Canadian media and information platforms that promote the approved government message. In essence, Canada demands that information providers pay them 5% of their revenue so that Canada can subsidize information providers they approve of. This is what the Canadian government calls “cultural protection.” In reality it is state-run media using a financial system that would make Vladimir Putin blush.

♦U.S. Right to Limit Canadian Trade Deals. This point is exponentially ridiculous for Canada to be upset about because the current USMCA/CUSMA already has that clause. The U.S (or Mexico) can exit the USMCA if Canada enters into a trade agreement with a “non-market” economy, ie China. [USMCA Sec 32:10]

What puzzles me is how similar the Canadian negotiating strategy is to Iran's -- both pretend the sides are this close, Trump pauses retaliation, and suddenly Canada or Iran says no deal, for the same reasons they always say it. I simply don't see what they think they're accomplishing, either Canada or Iran. The White House position, in short, is this:

Canada has been ripping off the United States for decades — and President Donald J. Trump is done letting them get away with it. Last week, the U.S. offered Canada the most preferential market access of any country on Earth, with deep cuts on steel, aluminum, autos, lumber, and more. Instead of partnership, Canada chose unreasonable demands, walk-backs, and flat-out rejection. . . . President Trump said it best: “Canada is easily the most difficult and unreasonable. They feel entitled, but they are not a State, and will be entitled no longer!” Canadian leadership chose retaliation over partnership — and America is no longer willing to carry them.

When he met with Trump just before he resigned as prime minister, Justin Trudeau is reported to have said that putting Canada on an even tariff basis, along with requiring it to meet its NATO commitments, would be the end of Canada. It's hard to avoid thinking Carney agrees.

Warning, Canadian Psyops!

"WE DON'T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!"

President Trump announces tariffs on Canadian cars, trucks, automotive parts and steel will jump to 50% on January 1, 2027, accusing Canada of "ripping off" the United States for years.

Trump points to Canada's tariffs on American farmers… pic.twitter.com/a3DvYZNEnJ

— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 24, 2026

Via Conservative Treehouse:

[Former Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia] Freeland calls in from Kiev to remind the Bloomberg audience that Canada’s best next steps will be to conduct targeted narrative operations against the American people in order to retain the Canadian parasite position. Rather than accept reciprocal terms for fair trade, Freeland notes the best strategy is to deliver targeted propaganda directly to American voters against President Trump. This was the approach Freeland, and former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took in 2018.

I asked Chrome AI mode, "What moves would Canada make in directing propaganda toward American voters in the trade war?" It answered,

Canada and its provincial governments are executing localized media buys directly in American media markets, particularly along the border and in key electoral districts.

The Move: The Ontario provincial government launched a television ad campaign in U.S. border markets invoking the legacy of Ronald Reagan to criticize modern protectionism. By using a conservative icon, the ad specifically targets right-leaning and moderate American voters, warning that tariffs on Canadian goods will ultimately hurt American consumers and destroy local automotive and agricultural jobs.

The Impact: These ads have directly provoked the White House, with President Trump publicly condemning them as "foreign-funded propaganda" at campaign rallies.

However, the cases AI cites are all from 2025. Whatever effect they may have had a year ago, they haven't deterred Trump from renewing his campaign. On the other hand, a paper from Carleton University in Ottawa outlines Canadian weaknesses vis-a-vis US strategy: Grey Zones Undermine Canadian Autonomy.

However improbable a war with America might be, the reality is that the U.S. already has in place a number of strategies that can and will be leveraged to its advantage to achieve its strategic objectives.

These levers of influence fall within the grey zone of conflict and render the need to formally occupy Canada redundant. The grey zone refers to coercive statecraft that operates between war and peace, using ambiguity, incrementalism, and unconventional tactics to achieve strategic objectives without triggering full-scale military responses.

One thing that annoys Canadians is when US residents refer to the US as "America", which they feel reflects the view that the US is the only important country in North America -- but here, some Canadians are reflexively doing it themselves. I love it when Canadians get annoyed.

We have already witnessed how the U.S. leverages shared institutions, such as NORAD and CUSMA, to its advantage. With 76% of its exports going to the U.S., Canada’s heavy reliance on the U.S. market is a source of leverage. The threats of trade disruption pressure Ottawa to adopt U.S.-aligned positions on third countries, a dynamic evident during NAFTA/CUSMA renegotiations.

. . . Ambiguity undermines public trust when citizens perceive their government as unable to protect national interests from a supposed “ally”.

. . . Grey MAGA Funding & Disinformation: A plausible scenario involves U.S.-based “grey MAGA money” fuelling independence movements (e.g., in Alberta) or anti-government protests. If Washington provides tacit approval or refuses to acknowledge these as foreign interference, it creates a “grey zone” where the Canadian government looks ineffective in managing its own borders and internal cohesion.

The “Border Crisis” Rhetoric: Continued negative rhetoric from Washington about the security of the Canada-U.S. border is predicted to lead to a “thickening” of the 49th parallel in 2026. This gradual increase in inspections and delays at crossings like the Windsor-Detroit Ambassador Bridge makes the Canadian government appear incompetent at managing the country’s most vital economic artery. Forced Policy Shifts: Under the pressure of incremental border slowdowns, the Canadian government may be forced to adopt U.S.-style immigration or security policies, making it look like a “vassal state” in the eyes of the public.

Those weasely MAGA types, deliberately making the Canadian government seem incompetent! And Trump just won't stop annoying Canadians!

President Donald Trump escalated his war of words with Canada on Tuesday morning, floating a U.S. push to rename Lake Ontario "Lake America" and accusing Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney of lying about the Trump administration's position on French-language protections.

"The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to [sic] doing much business with Ontario any longer," Trump wrote Tuesday morning on Truth Social.

Trump followed with another broadside aimed directly at Carney, rejecting claims the U.S. had sought concessions affecting the French language during the countries' recently collapsed trade negotiations.

"I would never interfere with Canadians speaking French!" Trump wrote. "In fact, I have never even thought of doing such a stupid thing."

"This lie was made up by a weak and ineffective Prime Minister in an attempt to gain political support, which he has totally lost, from the people of Quebec," Trump added. "I love French Canadians!"

Yup, those Canadians are gonna run rings around us bumpkins down here south of the border. We're gonna have to brace for their psyops, you can be sure.

Ceuta Update

The migrant invasion of Ceuta was briefly in the news on July 31 and a few days afterward, but the Spanish government declared that they all went home again, and everything was back to normal. Subsequent reports indicate this was never the case.

It's been 15 days since tens of thousands of migrants from Morocco began flooding across the border into the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta. Because the shocking images of the influx of mostly men of military age faded from international headlines after a few days, the casual news observer outside of Spain might think the situation in Ceuta is under control. In fact, the most recent videos coming out of the Spanish city are in some ways even more alarming than those documenting the initial invasion.

. . . While no official data has been released, a spokesperson for the police union JUPOL claims there is now a rape every day in Ceuta. Euronews reports that three Moroccan nationals were arrested this week for sexual assault offenses. El País describes the disturbing reason why another man was returned to Morocco (translation with the aid of AI): "A fourth detainee accused of entering a private residence and getting into the bed in which a woman was sleeping, wearing only his underwear, was also returned to Morocco after being charged with unlawful entry into a dwelling.”

A week ago,

Failing Spanish Prime Minister, the Socialist Pedro Sánchez declared the invasion crisis of Ceuta over, and flew off to vacation in the Canary Islands.

But the reality in the North African enclave is much different.

Thousands upon thousands of invaders are still there – a group almost entirely made of military-aged males, as befits an invasion.

The beaches of the territory have become an unmistakable tragedy, a slum made up with shacks made with straw and cardboard.

The sand is strewn with garbage and human waste, turning the once-touristic spot into a third-world hellhole.

More recently,

Attempts by authorities to clear Ceuta’s Trampolín beach and create a foothold for a return of the area to normality failed this week, as the remaining illegal migrants immediately re-established a tent city.

Less than 24 hours after the Spanish exclave city government attempted to clear the thousands of migrants from the encampment established on Trampolín, the local Ceuta Actualidad reported that the coastline was already covered in “kilos” of garbage.

“Not even a day. Not even a day has passed before Trampolín beach and its surroundings have become a dump again,” the local outlet reported.

The beach has been home to thousands of illegals who flooded across the border from Morocco last month in an apparently coordinated effort that saw around 80,000 migrants storm the border of Spain’s North African territory.

While Madrid and Brussels were quick to claim that all such illegals would be returned home, several thousand illegals remained within the city.

Just this past weekend,

The far-from-resolved invasion of Ceuta has plunged the city into a dramatic emergency marked by growing insecurity, surging crime, and warnings of a possible “sanitary catastrophe” by local healthcare professionals.

. . . El Español reports that local hoteliers have lost half of their usual restaurant clientele over the past weeks since the invasion. The outlet spoke with Gema Molina, a woman who has lived her whole life in Ceuta and who has been the owner of a local downtown restaurant over the past 15 years. She affirmed to the outlet that locals are now hesitant to go to a restaurant or club out of fear — a sentiment also shared by its owners who feel “abandoned” and not represented by the Spanish government.

. . . Molina further denounced that restaurants have suffered attacks by migrants who “enter in packs” to ask for food and drinks — becoming hostile should the restaurant refuse to comply with their demands. In other instances, she told El Español, it is the clients who are harassed by the migrants into compliance instead.

“The problem with all this is that if you don’t give them anything, there’s a confrontation. But I’ve also found bags of their feces outside my restaurant, as well as countless puddles of urine,” she denounced.

“And I’m the one who has to clean it up. Imagine walking up to a business that has human feces outside. No one is going to want to go in,” she continued.

It appears that the sanitation and crime problems are too big for the local government to handle -- the solution would mainly involve the mass removal of the remaining migrants, which estimates number about 10,000 of the possibly 80,000 at the start. But the national government is apparently unwilling to admit there's a problem at all, which is something we're seeing in the UK as well, and so far, legacy media is complicit.

The UK Rape Pamphlet Misses The Point

Via Breitbart News:

The British government has issued a guide to alleged asylum seekers to teach them the customs of the United Kingdom, such as not raping women or engaging in sexual acts with children.

In an apparent tacit admission of the backwards cultures being allowed into Britain, the Home Office — the government department tasked with controlling immigration — has published a nine-page booklet for new arrival migrants who apply for asylum, as is the case for most illegal boat migrants as soon as they set foot on English shores.

In a section on rape, migrants are told that both parties must consent to sex “without threat or pressure” and that it is not acceptable to have sex with someone who is “asleep, drunk, or unable to respond”.

“If you have sex with someone without their consent, this is called rape. Rape is a serious crime in the UK. You could go to prison, lose your support and accommodation, and it will affect your asylum claim,” the booklet explains.

The first question I have is whether the booklet will be published in Arabic, Urdu, or whatever languages the migrants actually speak, but it turns out this is a sensitive issue:

Home Office officials are preparing to translate guidance telling asylum seekers not to rape or beat women into multiple languages. The shocking literature – which was signed off by Home Office ministers - will be translated to “ensure there are no barriers to comprehension”.

But the Government is refusing to say which dialects the guidance, first revealed by the Express, will be adapted into. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch warned the official document effectively confirms some arrivals pose a danger to women and girls, saying: “Anyone needing this leaflet does not belong in Britain”.

Analysis of Government records show asylum seekers from Pakistan, Eritrea, Iran, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sudan, India, Somalia, Nigeria and Vietnam make up the top 10 nationalities seeking sanctuary in the UK.

. . . Shadow Home Office Minister Katie Lam said: “Despite telling the public that illegal migrants pose no risk to the public, it's beyond telling that the Home Office feels the need to release a leaflet telling illegal migrants that rape is wrong, that sex with children is wrong, and that men and women are equal.

So the best we can gather is that the booklet has in fact been published in English -- it's online here -- but it has yet to be fully translated into any language the migrants actually understand. In other words, the booklet isn't intended for migrants, it's intended for UK natives to give the impression that the government has good intentions -- except it would be embarrassing to list the exact languages into which they intend someday to translate it.

But the problem goes beyond recent migrants/asylum seekers, to whom the booklet is putatively addressed, although not in their languages. "Grooming gangs", which is a polite term for rape gangs, have been a problem in the UK for generations:

Several government reviews have reported failures by British institutions in preventing, identifying and prosecuting the widespread cases of group-based child sexual abuse and exploitation that mostly occurred between the 1990s and 2010s. Allegations of governmental and institutional failures to respond to the problem or to downplay or cover up the issue have been described as a grooming gangs scandal.

Media coverage and political discourse around these crimes has especially focused on the ethnic and religious background of perpetrators in high-profile cases, most of whom were Muslim men of Pakistani descent, and whether this prevented proper investigation. Data in Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire shows that, in the 2020s, men of an Asian ethnic background are disproportionately represented among perpetrators in those areas, but there is insufficient data to draw conclusions about ethnicity of perpetrators across the UK.

Note on one hand the extreme delicacy with which the subject is addressed at all, combined with the reluctant acknowledgement that the problem has been minimized for decades. I strongly suspect that rape gangs originated with the systematic importation of Pakistanis to the UK from the 1950s onward:

Migration from regions that now form Pakistan began in small numbers during the 1950s and 1960s, facilitated by Pakistan’s membership of the Commonwealth. Many migrants were recruited to address labour shortages in industries such as textiles, steel, engineering, manufacturing, while others, including doctors, contributed to the development of the National Health Service.

It used to be taught in Economics 101 that "labor shortage" is another way of saying "rising wages". It's hard for me to avoid thinking that the first wave of Asian migration came at the same time as the postwar Labour government's nationlization of the transport, coal, and steel industries and socialized medicine, which the link above effectively acknowledges. The Pakistanis were introduced more or less specifically to keep UK working-class wages down, at a time when, in contrast, the US working class became much more prosperous.

I find it fascinating that the question of migration in the UK is treated with the level of delicacy, even prudery, that was once attributed to Victorians over sex. Of course, sex is involved here, too, but the official line is that the problem is new, and it can be solved by telling tne new migrants not to rape -- except the migrants who've been in the UK since the 1950s, the vast majority of whom were born there, have been doing the same th9ng all along, but it's not polite to say this.

An At Best Obtuse Piece By Harold Myerson

I've been noting the peculiar incongruity of Real Clear Politics's opinion choices, especially its frequent platforming of far-left figures like Harold Myerson and Robert Reich, while they seldom publish conservatives much to the right of Victor Davis Hanson and Roger Kimball, who at this stage are just mainstream Republicans and boring ones at that. The other day, RCP ran this Myerson piece, The Democrats’ On-Again, Off-Again Class Politics.

Myerson argues that the New Deal-Fair Deal politics of FDR and Truman were "class-based", but the later politics of Adlai Stevenson and John Kennedy were not.

[W]hile working in John F. Kennedy’s White House, [Arthur] Schlesinger [Jr] comes away from a meeting with UAW President Walter Reuther and Sen. Hubert Humphrey, noting that both of them still spoke in “the New Deal’s distinctive rhetoric. Walter and Hubert could talk about ‘the people,’ about their ultimate wisdom, and the importance of doing things for them, in a way quite alien to the New Frontier”—the not particularly class-based perspective of the Kennedy administration. “I wish I could figure out,” Schlesinger laments, “the terms in which the idealism and imagination of the New Deal could be infused into the anti-sentimental, anti-rhetorical, understated mood of the New Frontier,” whose leaders he terms “technocrats.”

Read today, these passages illuminate the links between the shifting shapes of American liberalism—and, for that matter, American socialism—and the American economy. Writing at a time when New Deal reforms had produced an economy of opportunity “as secure and unalterable” as the landscape, when, as historian Nelson Lichtenstein recently noted in our pages, the real wages of working-class Americans doubled in a single generation, the postwar Democratic establishment had abandoned the class politics of its predecessors, whose victories had appeared to create a permanent middle-class majority.

Reuther and Humphrey, by contrast, were at that point semi-social democrats who were concerned about those who either didn’t make it into that middle-class majority or whose membership therein was precarious.

He then says that the resurgence of the Democratic Socialists of America is a return to "class-based" New Deal liberalism.

There are virtually no young people today who view their economic prospects as “secure and unalterable,” a view we now know was peculiar to the boomer generation. Is it any wonder that DSA, despite the fierce moral commitments of its founders, stayed a small organization of several thousand until the crash of 2008 and its prolonged and incomplete recovery made clear to young people, then and since, that the economy—deregulated and all but devoid of unions—was anything but secure? Is it any wonder that this year’s Democratic primaries, including this week’s in Florida, are defined by the precinct-walking and phone-banking of the young, class-based left, while the Democrats opposed to them can mobilize money but few if any volunteers?

But if the new DSA liberalism is "class-based", which class are we talking about? According to Nate Silver,

As a result of contentious Democratic primaries in Michigan, Maine, and New York, I’ve been reading a lot of conversation about the role that class plays in voting patterns in the United States. In these primaries, candidates like Graham Platner and Abdul El-Sayed who are associated with democratic socialism often claim to have the mandate of the working class. But in practice, their strengths tend to be with college-educated voters.

. . . I’m reminded here of Peter Turchin’s elite overproduction hypothesis. It basically argues that America is producing “too many” college graduates relative to the number of high-prestige, well-paying jobs available to them. People who wind up in this situation often carry heavy student loan burdens or other sorts of debt. Even if their material situation is objectively “just fine,” it’s rarely great. They’re gloomy about their own financial prospects, and feel aggrieved about the state of the country. Their class status is ambiguous: privileged in some senses, but they’re part of the “have-nots” in other meaningful ways.

. . . [W]hat is the most Democratic voting group in America? It’s voters with postgraduate degrees but lower-to-middle household incomes of $30K to $60K per year.

This is very much also the sweet spot for the DSA. In the group’s most recent member survey in 2021, 80 percent of members aged 25 or older had bachelor’s degrees, but 45 percent had household incomes below $60,000 per year.

This isn't the working class. But I decided to do some research on Harold Myerson. Originally, I wondered if he was a "red diaper baby", but it turns out that strictly speaking, he isn't, if the term is used exclusively to mean a child of Communist Party USA members. Instead, according to Wikipedia,

Meyerson was born to a Jewish family in Los Angeles. He was educated in the Los Angeles public schools and at Columbia University. The son of long time leaders in California of the Socialist Party of America, he was active in the 1970s in the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee.

So this led me to look into the Socialist Party of America, whose most prominent member was Norman Thomas, definitely not a member of the working class:

Thomas was the oldest of six children, born November 20, 1884, in Marion, Ohio, to Emma Williams (née Mattoon) and Weddington Evans Thomas, a Presbyterian minister. . . . The summer after he graduated from high school his father accepted a pastorate at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, which allowed Norman to attend Bucknell University. He left Bucknell after one year to attend Princeton University, the beneficiary of the largesse of a wealthy uncle by marriage. Thomas graduated magna cum laude from Princeton in 1905.

He went on to become a socially active Presbyterian pastor, but the denomination found him a little too socially active, and by the 1920s, he'd become editor of The Nation and had begun running for president as leader of the Socialist Party of America. With an Ivy League degree from the era when the Ivies were class-based institutions, he was a bourgeois socialist along the lines of the UK Fabian Society. We may assume Harold Myerson was brought up in a family with similar views, and he went to an Ivy in the 1960s when these views were typical, if inchoate.

So neither Norman Thomas nor Harold Myerson had a working-class background, and neither do the vast majority of DSA members. And this is nothing new, it goes straight back to Norman Thomas. I think this is related to another trend I've been noting for a while, the alliance between the upper bourgeoisie and Marx's Lumpenproletariat, petty criminals, addicts, idlers, sexual deviants, and undocumented migrants. The DSA romanticizes the Lumpenproletriat, apparently out of guilt and perhaps envy that the underclass is somehow more authentic than the upper bourgeoisie, and they want to claim that they're the real working class, not, say, the prosperous union workers whom David Brooks derides as "patio man" in the pages of The Atlantic, The New york Times, and The Washington Examiner:

Certain profound questions flow through his mind. Is a 542-square-inch grilling surface really enough, considering that he might someday get the urge to roast an uncut buffalo steak? Though the matte steel overcoat resists scratching, doesn’t he want a polished steel surface on his grill so he can glance down and admire his reflection as he is performing the suburban manliness rituals, such as brushing tangy sauce on meat slabs with his right hand while clutching a beer can in an NFL foam insulator ring in his left?

Myerson is having a hard time getting his head around the idea that these are the people that Walter Reuther, Hubert Humphrey, Harry Truman, and FDR represented.