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PaperclipPerfector  20hr ago (text post)   240 thread views

Transnational Thursday for December 18, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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The unstoppable force meets the unmovable object

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/espaces-autochtones/2213574/affaire-cope-cour-supreme-gladue-vulnerabilite-droit

A man in Nova Scotia was condemned to 5 years for battery on his wife. The appeal court reduced the sentence to 3 years because the original judge did not properly take into account the systemic difficulties that first nations offenders have faced through their lives (a precedent set by the Supreme Court in 1999 requires taking the circumstances of the accused into consideration for sentencing). The crown prosecution is appealing this to the Supreme Court now on the basis that the appeal court has not taken into account recent additions to the criminal code that require taking into account the particular vulnerability and frequent victimisation of first nations women.

Text of opinion

The appellant says the sentencing judge made legal errors by: failing to apply Gladue principles in a meaningful way; placing minimal weight on the recommendations of the Sentencing Circle [a special pre-sentence report from members of the defendant's tribe, in addition to the usual pre-sentence reports from the defendant and the prosecutor]; overemphasizing denunciation and deterrence, and underestimating the restraint provisions of the Criminal Code that specifically apply to Indigenous offenders; and failing to place adequate weight on the mental illness he was experiencing when he committed the offences. He seeks a new sentence of time served and “a period of residual probation with conditions that encourage rehabilitation”.

As these reasons explain, I agree the sentencing judge erred by not sufficiently accounting for the appellant’s serious mental health and addictions issues at the time of the offences. I find these factors, viewed in the context of the appellant’s Gladue factors, were underemphasized, which constituted an error in principle. The principle of restraint should have had more resonance in this case.

https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-718.04.html

718.04 When a court imposes a sentence for an offence that involved the abuse of a person who is vulnerable because of personal circumstances — including because the person is Aboriginal and female — the court shall give primary consideration to the objectives of denunciation and deterrence of the conduct that forms the basis of the offence.

https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-718.201.html

718.201 A court that imposes a sentence in respect of an offence that involved the abuse of an intimate partner shall consider the increased vulnerability of female persons who are victims, giving particular attention to the circumstances of Aboriginal female victims.

It's clownish to me that specific additions were made to the criminal code to protect Indigenous women, but that since the overwhelming amount of violence done to them is domestic violence from Indigenous men, these protections are essentially cancelled out by provisions to protect Indigenous offenders.

I'm curious about Mottizens' opinions about the US administration's motivations for the regime change push in Venezuala.

I think its multi-factoral. Monroe doctrine cleansing of Iran's influence (shadow fleet, drone technology sharing) as well as potentially stopping sharing of a cleaner less high-sulphur based crude oil to China which is easier to process for US's rival.

Reclamation of oil industry nationalised assets doesn't quite sit right as Grok says in 1976 they got paid 'fair market value' and there was varied compensation in 2006 (although they straight up seized assets from Exxon-Mobil).

I believe Fentanyl/cocaine has practically nothing to do with it despite the administration's claims.

Thoughts?

I think it's mostly the US importing foreigners and their grudges. It's primarily Rubio's thing, he's an anchor baby of Cuban refugees. There's a lot of focus on Israel and they probably approve as well given Venezuela and Iran's ties, but there is less focus on the huge failed elite caste that was outcast from South American countries and has settled in the Florida GOP which as a lot of influence with Trump. The neocons of course approve because this keeps blood flowing to the forever war machine until Trump can get decimated in the midterms and they can send 100s of billions to Ukraine again, but this is mostly Rubio and that foreign influence group's thing.

I think that it is partially a return to the Monroe Doctrine, not allowing China to gain more of a foothold in South America. I read someone's claim that it was because Venezuela was trying to sell petrol in Yuan. However I am not terribly familiar with the petrodollar concept and maybe someone else can explain.

I spent a decade in the oil and gas industry and I've always found Republicans' attitudes towards energy policy rather curious. On the one hand, they have a "drill baby drill!" mentality, and they express support for American energy companies. On the other hand, they talk about lowering prices for consumers. These are contradictory positions. When I was working in oil and gas, like most people, my livelihood was tied to how much my company could sell its product for, and the more we could sell it for, the more I got paid. The headiest times in my career were when oil was well over $100/bbl in the summer of 2014 and everyone was making money hand over fist. Of course, gas was $5/gallon adjusted for inflation, and conservatives were blaming Obama for hamstringing the energy industry. By February 2016, the price of oil had crashed, and there were mass layoffs, my office was down to a skeleton crew, and these were obviously also Obama's fault because he was hamstringing the industry. But gas was down to $2.50/gallon.

In other words, they expect good energy policy to mean constant drilling, even though constant drilling just isn't profitable. If oil is cheap they aren't going to spend billions of dollars on well starts. Most of the work I was doing in 2015/2016 was asset assignments from companies looking to unload their holdings to large investors, or smaller operators getting bough out by big companies like Consol and EQT. There was a modest rebound in 2017, which some people attributed to Trump, but the crash at the end of 2019 was worse than anything under Obama because it was clear that it wasn't turning around any time soon. We could muddle through 2016 with a skeleton crew, but 2019 spelled the end of my firm's oil and gas division. The Trump years have been pretty meh overall from an industry perspective, so the idea that Republicans are somehow good for the oil and gas industry is hogwash, since we had bigger highs and shallower lows under both Obama and Biden.

So when he talks about taking Venezuelan oil, I'm not sure how this is supposed to benefit either the oil and gas industry or the American consumer. Oil is currently trading around $55/bbl. Rig counts are dropping and are down about 30% from their Biden-era highs. Producers aren't drilling the oil they already have access to; giving them more isn't going to do much, especially when that oil is expensive to access and in a war zone. It's no surprise then that when Trump reached out to industry leaders earlier this week, reps from companies like Exxon and ConocoPhillips said point blank that they had no interest in resurrecting the Venezuelan oil industry with prices at five year lows. It's almost as if he doesn't understand how the laws of supply and demand work. If he were really concerned with how much American consumers are paying at the pump—which isn't much, historically—he'd strike a deal with Maduro to flood the US market with Venezuelan oil and use whatever money he had planned on spending on the war and use it to subsidize the US oil companies outright. This is a terrible policy for a number of reasons, but it's still better than the idiocy we have now.

Venezuelan oil isn’t for today, it’s for fifty years from now. The Ghawar and North Sea oil fields are drying up rapidly. Pretty soon the two major sources of oil on the planet are going to be Venezuela and Siberia. Sure Venezuelan oil is heavy sour crude, but when that’s all you can get it will taste like mana from heaven. When you are a state, you have to think on longer time frames than the individual. Fifty years from now might as well be next Thursday.

It's no surprise then that when Trump reached out to industry leaders earlier this week, reps from companies like Exxon and ConocoPhillips said point blank that they had no interest in resurrecting the Venezuelan oil industry with prices at five year lows. It's almost as if he doesn't understand how the laws of supply and demand work. If he were really concerned with how much American consumers are paying at the pump—which isn't much, historically—he'd strike a deal with Maduro to flood the US market with Venezuelan oil and use whatever money he had planned on spending on the war and use it to subsidize the US oil companies outright. This is a terrible policy for a number of reasons, but it's still better than the idiocy we have now.

This is exactly what I'm saying. Some of these reasons seem to be a casus belli based on publicly available (semi-plausible?) information but don't seem to hold water when you dig into them.

I believe Fentanyl/cocaine has practically nothing to do with it despite the administration's claims.

Than what is there on those small speedboats that makes US wanting to sink them so bad?

I would guess that probably they want to encircle Brazil with right-wingish regimes.

The speedboats exist and I believe they are full of drugs, piloted by drug runners. Clearly there's some intelligence team (DEA/CIA/DIA/whoever) landside that has verified that the boats are being loaded with drugs and when they will leave. I think details about this ISR are suppressed for 'sources and methods' reasons. I personally think its great that they're being obliterated for deterrence and supply constraint reasons.

I don't think Fentanyl is coming out on those boats though. My understanding is that fentanyl production happens in Mexico under the Sinoloa Cartel and not in Venezuala by the Cartel of the Suns linked to Maduro.

Cocaine, sure. Fentanyl no. Does the Fentanyl crisis have more political gravitas that can be used as a regime change justification? Sure. Is the regime change cassus belli another 'directionally correct' Trumpism where cocaine is the real driver? I don't know. I still think foreign influence of America's rivals in Venezuala is more likely a factor and runs afoul of the Monroe Doctrine.

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