All of a sudden, the US Air Force is considering cancelling a multibillion-dollar effort to develop a new stealth fighter. Citing the high cost of the so-called “Next-Generation Air Dominance” programme and the competing demands of other projects, USAF leaders have warned they may have no choice but to cancel NGAD – and find other ways of winning control of the air in future wars.
It’s a startling development for advocates of American air power. For generations, the whole US military – not to mention the militaries of America’s closest allies – have depended on the US Air Force to achieve air superiority against even the most determined and sophisticated foe, affording freedom of action for troops on the ground and ships at sea.
France is still in shock after President Macron unexpectedly dissolved parliament and called a general election. People were torn between stupor and anger, incredulity and panic.
Macron’s decision followed the European elections where the hard-right National Rally topped the polls with 31.4 per cent of the vote, and Macron’s party, on 14.6 per cent, was almost pushed into third place. If the polls are correct, the upcoming parliamentary elections might force Macron to appoint a National Rally prime minister.
You might think what you saw on Thursday night was a debate. It wasn’t. Well, technically, it was in that it had all the requisite elements to it, i.e., candidates, microphones, moderators, TV cameras, etc. Make no mistake, however. What you were watching was a highly scripted, highly choreographed Kabuki theater play that you weren’t supposed to recognize as such.
Mainstream politicians and pundits have barely been able to contain themselves since Nigel Farage argued that Western powers ‘provoked’ Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Here it was, another opportunity for our political and media classes to stigmatise the Reform UK leader, this time as a ‘Putin apologist’. Another chance to draw up a cordon sanitaire around the UK’s most prominent populist.
The debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump was so heavily slanted in Trump’s favor that it almost could have been paid for as a Trump campaign event.
It did not take more than five minutes to see the difference between Trump and Biden: while the incumbent president sounded tired and weak, Trump was energetic, vigorous, almost conversational. The longer they got into the debate, the more shallow Biden’s lines got, while Trump maintained his reasoning, his multi-clause sentences, his command of facts.
The best we can say about Biden after this debate is that he could go home afterward and sleep.
Anouk Aimee, the exquisite star of the classic 1966 French film A Man and a Woman, passed away on June 18, 2024. She was 92. Willie Mays, the “Say Hey Kid,” who hit 52 home runs in the 1965 season, also passed away on June 18, 2024. He was 93.
I joked to a friend, “Death comes in threes. Now another long-lived celebrity from the 60s must die.”
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he’s drawing up a “comprehensive plan” for how Kyiv believes the war with Russia should end.
“It is very important for us to show a plan to end the war that will be supported by the majority of the world,” the Ukrainian president said at a news conference in Kyiv alongside Slovenian President Natasa Pirc Musar on Friday.
The election in the United Kingdom next week will mark another stumbled step in the descent of Britain into unprecedented political absurdity. It will bring in the sixth prime minister in eight years, a performance rivalling Third and Fourth Republic France, when General de Gaulle said that he often could not remember the name of the current head of the French government, so rapid was their turnover. (He was the only person in the history of France who served in cabinets in three different Republics.) The only time in British history when there has been such a frequent rotation of prime ministers was between 1827 and 1835, (Liverpool, Canning, Goderich, Wellington, Grey, Peel, and Melbourne, but Liverpool governed for 15 years, Grey for four, and Melbourne for six, and Canning died in office; all of them were statesmen of considerable or even great stature). The present cavalcade has been a broadening shambles, unlike anything in modern British history. It is almost certain to continue, as there is no indication that the incoming prime minister, Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, possesses what will be required to bring Britain out of this nosedive. The only leader in the history of the Labour Party capable of winning consecutive full terms in office was Tony Blair, and that was largely because Margaret Thatcher and John Major had left the country in such excellent condition. Starmer has no such good fortune and there is no indication that he possesses any comparable aptitude to govern.
New Democrat MP Alexandre Boulerice is outraged that Loblaw Companies and its subsidiaries have received over $10 million in federal subsidies since 2019, while many Canadians struggle to afford groceries.
“Liberals are giving Loblaw millions of dollars in handouts,” Boulerice said in the Commons.
“While ordinary folks are going hungry, CEOs are getting the VIP treatment. Enough is enough.”
Steal bread from the mouths of children for 14 years and you too can be rewarded!
The first Liberal MP to publicly call for Justin Trudeau to step aside for a new leader says he thinks the party can still win the next election — as long as it renews itself.
Wayne Long, the MP for Saint John—Rothesay, sent a letter to fellow MPs Friday arguing that the voters are calling for a change of leader, and adding, “I agree.”
Here’s Jane Fonda warning us about the bad, scary, felonious orange man, because as you know, famous people have more knowledge than us peons. pic.twitter.com/YAeecVYmSR
At ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day in France a month ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered a warning about the state of democracy.
It was, he said on Juno Beach, “still under threat today, … threatened by aggressors who want to redraw borders. It is threatened by demagogy, misinformation, disinformation, foreign interference.”
With Canadians poised to go to the polls in at least three provincial elections this fall, and a federal vote due next year, concerns about the strength of democracy are being raised on multiple fronts.
In the weeks before he found Jesus, the evangelist formerly known as General Butt Naked reckons he was sacrificing four or five children a day.
Murder had long come naturally to him. He was only 11 when the elders who had steeped him in the ways of witchcraft first handed him the sacrificial knife.
But never had he killed with such intensity and ferocity as during those weeks in mid-1996 when Liberia’s first civil war reached its calamitous climax on the blood-soaked streets of Monrovia, the country’s battered capital.
