Blayne Haggart

Me, usually: political scientists would make the worst politicians.

Me, right now: political scientists are the only good politicians.

Development Is Hard Power Alexander De Croo explains why investments to alleviate poverty and shore up institutions are as important as tanks and drones.

“If we elevate fighter jets as “strategic” assets but dismiss a functioning education system as “mere aid,” and if we always find money for missiles but not for water or electricity, we are not protecting our societies. We are weakening them”

www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/d...?

YouTube video by David Dean Burkhart Laura Jean - Girls on the TV

At number 12: A perfect song from this Melbourne singer-songwriter (2018). A soft and haunting recollection of a young girl's experiences growing up. It hits hard. There's a video of the single edit, but you'll want to hear the 6 minute version.
#best100 #MusicSky
youtu.be/G1egX_w_msM?...

First time MP and former international relations prof @willgreavesmp.bsky.social stands on principle.

As someone posted in the last 48 hours, Carney's Davos speech really does seem to have served as an inkblot test, with people interpreting it in different ways.

#CdnPoli

YouTube video by David Dean Burkhart Laura Jean - Girls on the TV

At number 12: A perfect song from this Melbourne singer-songwriter (2018). A soft and haunting recollection of a young girl's experiences growing up. It hits hard. There's a video of the single edit, but you'll want to hear the 6 minute version.
#best100 #MusicSky
youtu.be/G1egX_w_msM?...

Never been a fan of the way USians sounds or looks. Maybe Statesiders?

Luxembourg stood idly by as Spuerkeess closed ICC bank accounts Opposition says Luxembourg government is secretly enforcing Trump sanctions by allowing state bank to act against International Criminal Court

here we go. just for you and @mollyquell.bsky.social

www.luxtimes.lu/luxembourg/l...

Technical Collaborators: Canada's Tech-Facilitated Complicity with ICE and Beyond Date: Tuesday, March 10, 2026 Time: 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM Location: Zoom (Virtual) - Link to be shared prior to event Registration is required....

So glad sthg like this is finally happening, largely thx to @kristenthomasen.bsky.social. Been ~2.5 years now of layers of disheartenment & sustained moral injury (5 if count covid), and a public discussion focused specifically on Canadian complicity, from a tech /tech law angle, is long overdue.

As @ldobsonhughes.bsky.social notes, international law isn't a principle to be sacrificed on the altar of hard-headed self-interest: it's a core Canadian national interest, and should be defended as such.

bsky.app/profile/ldob...

Like Carney's Davos speech, it could've served as a global rallying cry (Even Canada is opposed!) and a dagger to the heart of Trump's power. It could've struck a blow for the international law Canada needs to survive as an independent country. Instead Carney chose, again, to go along to get along.

Canada's fundamental national interest is in a non-authoritarian US, embedded in the international rule of law. Carney's statement served neither goals.

Imagine the signal it would've sent if Carney had displayed even a modicum of courage and wisdom, and called out the illegality of Trump's war.

Losing the War on Truth Iran and what to make of it

Mark Carney's embrace of Trump's illegal, falsehood-based war isn't hard-headed realpolitik: it's a direct enabling of a tyrant wannabe who poses an existential threat to Canada.
As Timothy Snyder argues, only by resisting Trump's lies can the US--and Canada, and the world--hope to get through this.

Lloyd Axworthy: Canada once rejected America’s aggressive, unlawful foreign policy. Today Mark Carney embraced it By endorsing preventive strikes on Iran during ongoing diplomacy, and after Washington itself shredded the previous agreement, we are embracing the very doctrine we used to reject, writes Lloyd Axwort...

“We invoke international law and the “rules based international order” when adversaries engage in unlawful actions, but abandon those same rules entirely when it’s the Americans…For a country that depends on law more than force for its own security, that is not realism; it is recklessness.”

Carney secures $2.6-billion uranium supply deal with India, launches talks on trade deal Following months of discussions, meeting between Carney and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi marks a thaw in relations

“Mr. Carney in a Mumbai speech Saturday said Ottawa can work with partners even if it sometimes disagrees with them.”

Or even if that country sometimes murders Canadian citizens, on Canadian soil.

www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/art...

If the rumours are true and the kids and social media consultation opens today, here are two things I think should be banned from
social media:

1) AI bots
2) recommendations algorithms that optimise for time on site

Firm regulation of both of these things is possible and auditable

Did Canadian exchange officers participate in US Iran strike planning? DND says no, but questions linger | CBC News A retired Canadian major-general says it's highly likely personnel on exchange with U.S. Central Command were likely involved at some level in planning and targeting airstrikes on Iran unless Ottawa e...

This is an illegal war breaching international law.
Canadian military cannot be involved in aiding the Trump war.
The Prime Minister must clarify.

www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

Good 🧵 on participation of 🇨🇦 forces in attacks on Iran via personnel exchanges w US regional command 👇

Important questions remain: did Canada tell its soldiers that they could / should decline orders that would violate the UN Charter or that risked violating of International Humanitarian Law?

This is the thing about exchanges--we send our officers to do real work in other countries' armed forces. So, when those countries do stuff, our officers are involved. Tis the price of doing business-- if you want these folks to learn.
BUT national control never goes away. Officers can say no 1/2

A great example of how public relations can course through Canadian journalism. I track the relations and public comms that circulate with architectural renderings and photographs—like I did with Sidewalk Labs from 2017 to 2020. New tab:

Screenshot add announcing trade diversification to protect Ontario

Screenshot cover Ontario's Building Fortress Am-Can plan

Ontario provincial government's attempt to square the trade policy circle.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

-Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

I just find it all so tiresome, because LLMs are so horribly suited for what they want them to do. It’s like if the military designated the Magic 8 Ball a supply chain risk. And the media responded by fawning over Mattel’s brave ethical stand, and wondering what the Origami Fortune Teller would do.

Sigh. Yes. Caviezel was perfectly cast -- they all were (especially Bear) -- which makes his MAGAdom particularly painful.

They don't *need* AI to make these decisions. But they *want* AI to make these decisions. Because the tech gives them plausible deniability--something to blame (other than themselves) when things go wrong.

Person of Interest is to the 2010s and 2020s what The X-Files was to the 1990s and 24 to the 2000s. There's no better pop-culture starting point for understanding the fears and dilemmas of our surveillance-based, datafied society.

Person of Interest reboot, please.

1. The goal is to replace scientific, evidence-based knowledge with oracular knowledge, and then to control the oracle.
2. This was the main thematic plot line for Seasons 3-5 of Person of Interest.

Lloyd Axworthy: Canada once rejected America’s aggressive, unlawful foreign policy. Today Mark Carney embraced it By endorsing preventive strikes on Iran during ongoing diplomacy, and after Washington itself shredded the previous agreement, we are embracing the very doctrine we used to reject, writes Lloyd Axwort...

"We invoke international law and the 'rules based international order' when adversaries engage in unlawful actions, but abandon those same rules entirely when it’s the Americans doing the bombing."

#Opinion from former foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy

Should’ve written attack, not invasion. Illegal under international law, either way.

Canada is only one country. It couldn’t have stopped the illegal US and Israeli invasion. But as prime minister, Mark Carney had the obligation to stand up for fundamental Canadian interests in sovereignty and the rule of law. He failed to do so, utterly.

Acting as international law doesn’t exist, as Carney is doing in his refusal to even mention the term, creates a self-fulfilling prophesy. Worse, it creates the might-makes-right world many Canadians thought Carney wanted to prevent. It makes us easy pickings for Trump’s US.