Caught up in naval-gazing and living under the protective shield of the United States, Canada has allowed its military presence worldwide to wither over the last decade or so, France’s new ambassador to Ottawa suggested Friday.
In blunt comments that he said reflected his own personal opinions, Michel Miraillet argued Canada needs to boost its defence capabilities as threats increase from the likes of China, Russia and North Korea.
It’s been a big week for Josep Borrell, the European Union’s most senior diplomat. In two historic, borderline apocalyptic speeches this week, Borrell laid out a stark vision of Europe’s threatened place in a world of growing insecurity and competition between states, grappling with a reality the continent’s leaders have until now been too slow — perhaps fatally slow — to apprehend.
Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers captures a rare moment of optimism in an otherwise troubled life. In February 1888, van Gogh rented a property in Arles in the south of France, which was to be known as the ‘Yellow House’. He envisaged this to be a haven for artists, and had invited Paul Gauguin to join him. His hope was to decorate the house with paintings of sunflowers, 11 of which were eventually produced (one was later destroyed in an air raid in Japan). With their bright and striking yellow tones, these paintings are infused with van Gogh’s sense of hope and possibility – a stark contrast to the ominous dark violet blues of the self-portrait produced at the asylum at Saint-Rémy, a year before his suicide.
Erich Maria Remarque’s great novel was turned into a harrowing 1930 film – but the rising Nazi Party couldn’t stand its anti-war message
In December 1930, Joseph Goebbels led an attack against the landmark anti-war film, All Quiet on the Western Front. Based on the controversial, hugely successful novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a First World War veteran, it depicts the bleak, traumatising reality for Germans in the trenches. In the story, a group of school chums enlist – all hyped up on the glory of war – and perish one-by-one.
The American-made film, directed by the Russian-born Lewis Milestone, was critically acclaimed in the United States, Britain, and France; by the time it reached Germany, All Quiet on the Western Front had won Academy Awards for Outstanding Production and Best Director.
Coming soon…
Netflix’s German-language All Quiet on the Western Front is a haunting revelation
The First World War is reimagined as a symphony of mud, teen angst and terrible beauty in All Quiet on the Western Front, Edward Berger’s stunning German-language retelling of Erich Maria Remarque’s anti-war novel. As with Lewis Milestone’s 1930 Hollywood adaptation, it faithfully communicates Remarque’s message about the futility of the conflict. To this Berger adds production values that have the blood-in-ears rush of a hyper-stylised video game. Violence may be hell, but Berger bathes it in a pulsating shimmer. Oh, what a lovely-looking war he has conjured.
One year after the real-estate buying binge of its founder was exposed by The Post, a new documentary dives deep into the murky finances of the Black Lives Matter Global Foundation — and meets some of the people it allegedly harmed.
“The Greatest Lie Ever Sold,” a film spearheaded by controversial conservative commentator Candace Owens, premiered Wednesday in Nashville at a screening attended by Kanye West, Ray J and Kid Rock.
Russia’s war in Ukraine is proving to be “one of the biggest threats” to the world economy at the moment, according to Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland.
Freeland, who also serves as Canada’s finance minister, made the comments to reporters in Washington, D.C., on Friday following the annual meetings of the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund (IMF), which put out a stark world economic outlook earlier this week.
“As the days passed and I took notice of the great line of huge trucks on Wellington Street, the invasion — it was nothing less — of the huge 18-wheelers and their drivers, the nightly bonfires, the fearful lineups at the few takeouts still open, I knew matters had reached a head. This was an absolute crisis.
I immediately called an emergency cabinet meeting. The peril was great. The thought ran through my mind that it might be on my watch that the great experiment, the over 150 years of our precious Confederation, could be at an end.
This person uses ghost/ghostself pronouns because gender feels like a ghost pic.twitter.com/mUdqMVbKXl
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 13, 2022
Our society automatically transforms any desire into law, even a depressed person’s death wish yet we have outlawed the death penalty.
Her name was Shanti De Corte. She was 23. This Belgian girl was euthanized, surrounded by her family, after legally obtaining euthanasia. Six years earlier, Shanti was at Brussels International Airport. She was to fly to Rome after graduation. She was in the departure lounge when Islamic terrorists blew themselves up. Shanti was a few meters away from them. She was taken away alive from the airport that morning, but she would never really get out of that nightmare.
We will soon learn even more disgraceful details.
The Igor Danchenko trial, which started this week, has already yielded embarrassing revelations about the “Steele dossier” fiasco. The FBI, it turns out, offered Christopher Steele, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s opposition researcher, $1 million to prove his claims about Trump–Russia collusion. He couldn’t do it. But that didn’t stop the FBI from using his tissue of lies to obtain a search warrant against Carter Page, a hapless Trump campaign volunteer.
“The problem with living under postmodernism,” Dean Hunter Baker commented, “is that everyone is constantly tending the narrative instead of doing something useful.”
It does seem that way, especially if you run in my circles.
But of course, plenty of people are doing something useful. The world is full of those whose diligent and largely unsung work makes the lights stay on, the grocery shelves fill with food, the toilets flush and even the Internet run. They have been ignored, denigrated and even subjected to a species of economic warfare for the last several decades, but suddenly people are starting to notice that they matter.
The Iranian authorities suffered a PR fiasco after being forced to take down a giant billboard in a central square in Tehran when women in the poster, or their relatives, objected to being depicted as supporters of the government and the compulsory-wearing of the hijab.
The billboard controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps was a montage of about 50 Iranian women wearing the hijab under the slogan “Women of my Land”. It was taken down within 24 hours after at least three of the women pictured said they objected to their image being misused.
September 21. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a pre-recorded speech on Russian television, announces that Russia is being attacked by the Ukrainian government and the West. He defines Ukrainian territories occupied by the Russian army as “liberated zones”. He speaks of the referendums he staged in the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson to try illegally to attach them to Russia. He says that he has decided on a “partial mobilization” to defend the Russian fatherland; adds that the West threatens Russia, and that any aggression against Russian territory will lead to a response by “all weapon systems available to us”.
Over 70 percent of Canadians say they support increasing Canada’s oil and gas production to reduce the world’s dependence on Russian energy, according to a recent poll.
Released by market research firm Leger on Oct. 12, the poll found that 72 percent of Canadians indicated their support for producing and exporting more domestic oil and gas resources.
The poll was conducted with 1,535 Canadian residents aged 18 and over from Sept. 30 to Oct. 3, via the firm’s online panel.
A surviving member of the Milwaukee Dancing Grannies troupe slapped back at accused Waukesha parade killer Darrell Brooks when he asked if she saw him driving the SUV that barreled down the route killing six people.
Laura Thein took the stand on Thursday in a trial that has seen numerous delays due to Brooks’ outbursts and interruptions which have escalated since he decided to represent himself.
Brooks, 40, is accused of driving his car through the Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin on November 21, 2021, killing six people between the ages of eight and 81, and injuring more than 60 people.
