Aldrich Ames, C.I.A. Turncoat Who Helped the Soviets, Dies at 84

Aldrich Ames, the most murderous turncoat in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency, whose betrayal in working for the Soviet Union went undetected for almost a decade, died on Monday.

He was 84 and had been a federal prisoner, serving life without parole, since 1994.

The death was recorded in the federal Bureau of Prisons inmate database. The entry did not cite a cause or say where he died.

The son of an alcoholic C.I.A. officer, Mr. Ames failed upward through the agency ranks for 17 years until he attained a headquarters post of extraordinary sensitivity.

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Canada’s Illusion of Stability May Crumble in 2026 Amid Increasingly Dangerous Geopolitics: Clement

OTTAWA — As 2026 starts with high-consequence geopolitical events in Venezuela and Iran, Canada continues to present itself to the world as stable, prosperous, and benign. Yet the defining lesson of this past year is that our perceived strength is increasingly an illusion — a façade sustained by political denial, regulatory weakness, and the monetization of risk.

Across multiple fronts — land ownership, real estate, immigration, organized crime, and national security — the same pattern has repeated itself. Warnings were issued. Evidence accumulated. And Ottawa largely chose inaction.

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Breathtaking hypocrisy of woke NYC mayoral aide who says whites owning homes is racist… as her $1.4m secret is revealed

There was a time when parents would rebuke children for such hateful public exhibitionism

New York City’s new renters tsar wasted no time in outraging locals for vowing to make life harder for whites in the Big Apple over their role in ‘racist gentrification.’

But Cea Weaver has kept strangely quiet about her own mother – a white professor who owns a gorgeous $1.4 million home in America’s fastest gentrifying city, where longtime black residents are quickly being priced out.

The hardline leftist’s mother Celia Applegate, a professor German Studies at prestigious Vanderbilt University, resides at a pretty, roomy 1930s Craftsman home in one of Nashville’s leafiest neighborhoods.

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Germany’s HateAid: Portrait of a ‘Trusted Flagger’

The role assigned to ‘trusted flaggers’ under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) has been a target for criticism from Republican lawmakers in Washington, who have argued that the legislation risks making Europeans and, more specifically, European governments the arbiters of what even Americans can and cannot say online. The DSA requires online platforms, like Facebook or X or TikTok, to maintain “notice and action” mechanisms that allow “individuals and entities” in the EU to flag content for suppression, and it empowers EU member state governments to appoint organizations whose notices the platforms are required to give priority treatment. These are the ‘trusted flaggers.’

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BORG: Divided loyalties — Freeland has no business cashing a paycheque from another government

A sitting Member of Parliament (MP) should not be serving a foreign government. That principle ought to be uncontroversial in a parliamentary democracy.

Yet it is now being tested by Chrystia Freeland’s decision to accept an advisory role with the Ukrainian government while continuing to hold a seat in Canada’s House of Commons.


It’s so shady but so normal for the Liberal Party.

More … Canada co-signs pledge to secure Ukraine under future peace deal

(Incognito)

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What the raid on Venezuela teaches us about the Trump administration

The U.S. raid-and-capture operation in Venezuela that ended the rule of Nicolás Maduro and upended power politics in the Western Hemisphere was unusually complicated. The motivations behind it were perhaps even more complex – and so are the lessons that the Delta Force blitz provide for Americans and for governments across the globe.

Here are some of the important political currents running beneath the surface of the astonishing episode, which has provided a template for evaluating the early 21st-century Trump Corollary to the early 19th-century Monroe Doctrine – two policies that have no legal basis but still establish distinct American spheres of influence and behaviour and enforce them …

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US discussing options to acquire Greenland, including use of military, says White House

US President Donald Trump has been discussing “a range of options” to acquire Greenland, including use of the military, the White House said.

In a statement, the White House told the BBC that acquiring Greenland was a “national security priority”.

It comes after Trump repeated over the weekend that the US “needed” Greenland – a semi-autonomous region of fellow Nato member Denmark – for security reasons.

Update: Rubio Tells Lawmakers Trump Wants to Buy Greenland

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has told lawmakers that President Trump plans to buy Greenland rather than invade it, while Mr. Trump has asked aides to give him an updated plan for acquiring the territory, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.

Mr. Rubio made his remarks in a briefing on Monday with lawmakers from the main armed services and foreign policy committees in both chambers of Congress. The same day, Mr. Trump told aides to deliver an updated plan.

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LILLEY: Mark Carney doesn’t have time to move slowly on new pipeline

 

Donald Trump said the Venezuelan oil industry could be booming again in 18 months. Here in Canada, we might have finished the first round of consultations on a new pipeline, but we won’t have concluded the court challenges to it.

This is the dilemma Canada is facing: We are still moving at Ottawa speed, meaning slow, while the Americans are talking about a breakneck pace in restoring Venezuela’s oil industry.


Carney has not changed his spots.

Venezuela: Trump announces plan to get up to 50M oil barrels

US President Donald Trump has announced that “interim authorities in Venezuela will be turning over” between 30 to 50 million barrels of sanctioned oil to the US.

“This ​oil ​will be sold at its market price, and that money will be controlled by me, as ‍president of the United States of America, to ​ensure it is used to benefit the ⁠people ​of Venezuela and the United States!”

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Ukraine’s security guarantee is a paper tiger with crucial details missing

Coalition of the delusional

Progress. Success. A “very big milestone”.

For the first time in more than a year, Ukrainians, Americans and Europeans seemed to be singing from the same hymn sheet.

Peace, they say, is closer than ever, because they are on the brink of agreeing to a security deal to deter a new Russian attack on Ukraine after a ceasefire.


No Carney at the signing?

Coalition’s Ukraine security guarantees include deploying troops if ceasefire is reached

Canada has promised a substantial ongoing commitment to the force that would backstop the peace deal. Precisely what kind of forces Canada would deploy is unclear, partly because the military, short of personnel and equipment, is in rebuilding mode.

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The Toppling of Villains Has Begun in Earnest. It Must Continue.

A little while ago, I had a column in this space that challenged the groupthink wisdom that assumes 2026 is going to be a bad year for President Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill. One of the items on which I rested my challenge is worth repeating today.

What I predicted was that the ruling regimes, both Iran and Venezuela, would go by the boards, and the benefits coming to everybody in America not affiliated with the Democrat Party would be manifold.

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AI deepfakes of Nicolás Maduro flood social media — depict Venezuelan dictator in jail with Diddy, among other vids

Within hours of President Trump’s announcement of the dramatic weekend capture of Nicolás Maduro, social media was flooded with AI-generated deepfakes showing the captured Venezuelan dictator in handcuffs and even sitting alongside Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was previously locked up in the same jail where Maduro now is in real life.

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GUNTER: Citizens don’t make distinction between crime and social disorder

You can’t reduce crime simply by redefining what is and isn’t a crime. Many actions that were once crimes are now chalked by city bureaucrats up to “social disorder” and no longer show up in crime stats.

In other cases, crimes are so common and police response to them is so indifferent — like theft of bikes and tools and law furniture from private yards — that many victims no longer bother to report them.

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The Iranian Uprising: The Time to Plan for This Potential Regional Conflict Is Before the Boats Leave Qeshm

On December 29, protests erupted among shopkeepers in Tehran, Zanjan, and Hamadan — all clustered in Iran’s north and west. Then came Qeshm, isolated on the southern coast.

That location matters. Qeshm Island sits just 60 kilometers across the Strait of Hormuz from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). That is roughly the distance from Manhattan to Philadelphia, and far shorter than most successful Mediterranean crossings from Syria to Europe.

If Iran’s current instability deepens into a full crisis, Iranians may well attempt these crossings by boat. The proximity of Iran to the UAE makes it virtually inevitable.

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