The US empire is already crumbling as is, I’m not sure how much more disruption it really needs but it might happen in our life time.

If anything, I’m pissed that we’re on the eve of a new world geopolitics era and the US completely shitted up some big players in the East. And also, shitting in their own backyard with this Canada annexation talk.

I agree on all your points there.

But you have to understand the mindset of the super-elites that are pulling the strings. Borders are an inconvenience to them and their business. They don’t want to deal with conversion rate, they don’t want to print extra information on labels to respect the law of one specific country, they don’t want to manage a PR campaign with locals. All of that is a drain on resources and a stopgap to their growth and consumption.

The US government is openly corrupt and captured, at this point, it’s on the verge of being a free-for-all for the super-elite that want their way. If Canada is brought under that corrupt umbrella, they cut a lot of the “inconvenience” for their infinite growth.

Steve Bannon actually explained the reasons why Trump wants Canada so bad, and it’s actually pretty “rational”. I don’t want the US to take over, but we need to understand just how much they would gain if they annexed us.

• More access points to the melting Arctic cap and all the untapped resources underneath
• More liberties to plant military bases across the north of the continent, to secure what is seen as the soft underbelly of North America
• All the other resources, all of our expertise, all of our hydro-electric potential

Mind you, this also explains the weird obsession with Greenland. There are military thinkers that want to create a defensive position out of the newly freed strait that will manifest north of Canada, and Greenland/Canada are key positions to do this.

It’s dangerous to hand wave this as a weird and quirky tantrump, there’s some really greedy fuckers across the border and they want direct dibs on the Arctic.

They are a sovereign country, a sovereign country that stated red lines in regard to their territorial security. The West knowingly provoked Russia by posturing that Ukraine would join NATO.

This is exactly the same reaction the US would have if the scenario was flipped (as stated in the Monroe doctrine). It is hugely hypocritical of the previous administration to pretend that Russia is in the wrong for wanting to secure their border.

Ukraine is torpedo’ing their own ceasefire offer by doing an indiscriminate drone attack (a war crime), and the first thing you think is “buh in my brain Putin would break tuh ceasefuhre uhnyways” ?

If only the west hadn’t provoked the whole conflict.

Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine

What is that quote supposed to prove or disprove? No one is implying* that Russia has a perfect scorecard for respecting international treaties.

The bigger point of this article (that seems to go over your head) is that Ukraine also has a responsibility to prevent civilian casualties, which it has neglected regularly. Furthermore, the drone bombing act seems to have been a massive indiscriminate attack, looking at the images, there’s multiple nonsensical targets such as civilians dwelling and some civilian parking lots. Whyever would any serious military target those? All this does is escalate a bloody conflict that should’ve been diplomatically settled years ago.

They committed a war crime. Take a moment to look at the photo gallery, they bombed civilian cars, civilian apartment complex, single family housing.

And they are doing this on the eve of a potential ceasefire. This is not “sad”, it’s malicious and counterproductive. This kind of attack does nothing to improve the balance of power of Ukraine, it’s essentially state terrorism.

OK so you had loads of good advice, but I’ve done a very similar clean up on a branch, and I have the cheapest option to recommend: I’ve debarked my branch with a nail.

The flat head of the nail can be used to ‘crowbar’ some pieces of bark, by leveraging the length of the nail to apply pressure. You can also use the side of the head to push off bark from knots and the side of the branch.

To finish on my projects, I had to eventually use a metal file mill + sand paper. I intend to do more projects like this so I’ll almost assuredly get some of the tools listed in here, tho.