Germany has unveiled its first military strategy since the Second World War, and it’s certainly ambitious. By 2039, Berlin wants to command the strongest army in Europe, with a total of 460,000 combat-ready troops. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius argues that this is a historic turning point, and he’s right. But the national effort he’s asking for requires a change in the national attitude toward war, which may be much harder to achieve.
The Iran war is now in an artificial stasis, in which practically all of the vast international coalition of people who are repelled and horrified by U.S. President Donald Trump, in the United States and elsewhere, have reflexively bought into the Iranian claim that since that ghastly regime has ostensibly survived, Iran is winning the war.
This is a false conception. This has been the most one-sided war between serious combatants in modern history. Iran has been deprived of much of its military capacity, including related defence production, and is now being tightly blockaded by sea. American casualties have been minimal.
Canada’s auto sector is warning that a federal decision to ease tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles could undermine domestic manufacturing and weaken North American supply chains, as executives say the policy puts Canadian jobs at risk.
The concerns were raised at a Commons science committee hearing after cabinet approved a quota allowing up to 49,000 Chinese-made battery electric vehicles into the Canadian market this year at reduced tariff levels, with the cap set to increase by 6.5% annually.
With thanks to whoever retweeted this story from 2024. Seems relevant. @MarkJCarney @cafreeland @ISED_CA @environmentca #ElectricVehicles https://t.co/Flir0E3081
— Holly Doan (@hollyanndoan) April 25, 2026
A TEACHER from California has been arrested after shots were fired at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner where President Trump was guest of honour early today. The President and his wife were unhurt; one Secret Service agent was shot at close range but was saved by his bullet-proof vest. You can read about developments here. Meanwhile . . .
MAINSTREAM media and politicians throughout the Western world who insist on calling Trump a fascist, a dictator, a threat to democracy, and literally Hitler, declared a three-hour moratorium on insulting him before they raced to try to escape any responsibility.
OTTAWA — A landmark parliamentary ethics report recommends that Prime Minister Mark Carney — and all future prime ministers — be required to sell their investments within 60 days of taking office, while citing this reporter’s testimony on The Bureau‘s reporting into Carney’s China-linked business exposure and high-level Chinese Communist Party official visits.
I’m not going to pretend to have approached the BBC’s recent Panorama documentary, Anti-Semitism: Why British Jews Are Afraid, with any degree of impartiality. The title alone triggered me. ‘YOU! YOU, YOU UTTER BASTARDS! YOU’RE WHY WE’RE AFRAID!’ Alas, the BBC has declined to make a 30-minute documentary about itself.
Hank Idsinga says he won’t be going for an interview with Toronto police over allegations he’s raised of dysfunction, racism and antisemitism in their ranks.
“I’ll let the book speak for itself,” Idsinga told the Star, referencing “The High Road: Confessions of a Homicide Cop,” his memoir of 34 years as a police officer, which ended with him walking away from a celebrated career as leader of Toronto’s homicide unit. Toronto police have this week written Idsinga and sent uniformed officers to his door in an attempt to get him to appear for an interview.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, whose wife has recently been charged with corruption, is having his way with the destiny of his homeland. A socialist and social engineer at heart, he reserves the right to legalize a civilian invasion by Muslims.
So far, the Muslim population has swollen to an estimated 2.4 to 2.5 million souls—roughly 5% of the nation’s total—fueled overwhelmingly by immigration from North Africa, above all Morocco, which accounts for 65% of the Muslim immigrant cohort. These communities cluster with ominous symbolic precision in the ancient strongholds of al-Andalus: Andalusia and Granada alone shelter some 400,000 Muslims, while Madrid, that later-born capital, now harbors 100,000. Fertility differentials compound the shift; children born to at least one Muslim parent represented 11% of all Spanish births in 2024, a rate that mocks the anemic native birth figures.
Medical assistance in dying now accounts for roughly one in 20 deaths in Canada, according to the latest government data. That makes it the country’s fifth-leading cause of death.
For patients facing severe illness and suffering, the option is framed as an act of compassion. But its rapid expansion raises uncomfortable questions about how government-run health systems respond to the reality of scarce public resources.
Caring for patients with complex, chronic or terminal conditions is among the most expensive obligations in any health system. That creates an inherent tension in systems where the government both finances care—and decides what care is worth covering.
Joy Reid blasted President Donald Trump’s Justice Department (DOJ) as ‘absolutely insane’ after it brought a sweeping federal indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
The DOJ accused the group of secretly funneling millions of dollars to extremist organizations including the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC said the payments were to informants embedded with the groups.
Former MSNBC star Reid used her show to sharply criticize the case unveiled by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, which alleges the civil rights nonprofit defrauded donors by paying informants.
A family relies on a rusty sedan to get around. It’s slow and breaks down often. But the family, instead of opting for a practical replacement, puts in an order for a flashy, new model not yet in showrooms.
Sure, the luxury vehicle is significantly more expensive, and it will take years to arrive. But it is sleek and fast, and the family figures the time they will save commuting makes the higher price worth it (despite the loan they will need that will add to their already considerable debts). Besides, many of their neighbours have luxury cars – it’s about time they had one, too.
This in a nutshell is the faulty logic the Liberal government is using to create a high-speed rail line between Quebec City and Toronto.
Halto Alto!
famous saying of Anton Chekhov’s has been making the rounds. “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall,” Chekhov advised, “in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”
I wonder if the thugs and theocrats who have been plundering Iran for the last 47 years have read Chekhov. If so, I conclude that they are slow learners. In January, the Iranian authorities slaughtered more than 40,000 protesters—Iranian citizens, mind you, who were fed up with the oppressive death cult that has been oppressing Iran since the dour clown Ayatollah Khomeini waddled off that plane from Paris in Tehran in 1979. Over the course of about a month this past winter, the US assembled a huge military presence in the waters around Iran: two aircraft carrier strike groups and innumerable air assets.
Veteran Canadian activist Kari Simpson and her organization Culture Guard are facing a wave of human rights complaints in British Columbia tied to public commentary on gender identity, with legal support being provided by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms says its lawyers are representing Simpson and Culture Guard before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal in response to at least 18 complaints filed by Jessica Simpson, a self-described transgender activist formerly known as Jonathan Yaniv.
