I continue to dabble in Bluesky to see what comes up. Notably, two remarkable essays.
First, there's a link to the London Review of Books essay "A Man of Parts and Learning" It's about a man called Francis Williams, slavery, black culture, art history, global intellectual currents of the mid-eighteenth century, and Halley's Comet, among other things -- and it's a beautiful composition to boot.
Second, a link to an online periodical hitherto unknown to me, BylineTimes, and in it a statement entitled: ‘Europe and Canada Must Forget Trump and Form a Coalition of the Willing to Defend Ukraine’
Most Canadian discourse since the American election seems to have been about how Canada can most effectively surrender to Trumpism in order to avoid some of what the new regime in the United States seems likely to threaten us with.
"Europe and Canada Must Forget Trump" is not that kind of statement.
It is a declaration by a large number of mostly European politicians and military and foreign policy mavens, plus some Canadians: Chris Alexander, Margaret Atwood, Ratna Omidvar, Roman Waschuk, Roland Paris, Belkan Devlin, Alexander Lenoska. It accepts that the United States is not going to be the West's partner in world and European affairs in the foreseeable future. It argues that Europe and Canada need to make an independent military and foreign policy independent of what the United States is likely to do. It includes a substantial military buildup.
