World news roundup: Irian Jaya, Syria, Canada

Irian Jaya, or West Papua, per Counterpunch, continues to descend further in its own, Tolstoyean-specific, misery and hell. For the unfamiliar, the western half of the island of the New Guinea was, during Dutch colonial rule, administered separately from the Dutch East Indies. And, it held on to it after Indonesian independence in 1949, leading to the West New Guinea dispute in the early 1960s. Sukarno turned up the heat on the Dutch, pushed the US, and got Soviet weapons for a possible invasion. The Dutch turned the territory over to the UN. It almost immediately handed it to Indonesia, with Sukarno promising some degree of autonomy. Six years later, under Suharto, a rigged plebiscite fully annexed it to Indonesia.

Also per Counterpunch, with or without Irian Jaya/West Papua, but very much with it, it's a product of the Cold War. JFK leaned on the Dutch precisely because Sukarno cozied up to the USSR. In 1975, Ford ignored Indonesia's overrunning East Timor, abandoned to its fate by Portugal after the Salazar dictatorship was overthrown in Lisbon, because of fears/claims/worries East Timor would go Commie.

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Another good piece from Counterpunch here is about the "forgotten Palestinians." These are the ones who are refugees in Syria, and have become entangled in Syrian civil war issues of the past decade-plus. Richard Falk notes the Assad government viewed them suspiciously after the start of the civil war, for a variety of reasons. Falk adds that the anti-anti-Assad angle of the "hard left," as he calls it, and if we're talking people like Aaron Maté, pseudoleftists is more what I call them, increases the problem.

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Pretty Boy Trudeau is in serious trouble in the Great White North. As things stand now, he and his Liberals are going to get barbecued in the next Canadian federal election; fortunately, it's 18 months away. The Walrus has a longform, including longform fact-checking, about Trudeau's past promises vs performance and many other things, with segments from a longform interview sliced in between.

Near the end of the piece, Canadian housing prices (which are a LOT worse than most US big cities in Canada's main metro areas) get discussion. If Pretty Boy can't "get" this issue, he's sunk. 

After that, the Walrus piece notes that Trudeau will almost certainly go negative and heavily so to try to win.

Of further note, per Wiki? Almost all the Commons incumbents who are not running again are Liberals.

Two questions on my mind are:

A. Can the LDP get enough of their shit together to pass the Liberals, and, somewhat related

B. Could we see a coalition if the two block the Conservatives from a majority, but finish second and third, in whichever order?  

I assume if that happens, even if the LDP remains in No. 3, that the price of coalition is the Liberals turf Trudeau as party leader.