In French, a “bidonville” is a shantytown. A “bidon” is a large container, like the giant yellow vegetable oil bottles used to carry drinking water in developing countries.
I’ve seen plenty of shantytowns in cities from India to Togo; they are an unfortunate consequence of rapid urbanization.
What surprised me when I came home to Washington, D.C., a few months ago was seeing shantytowns both outside the State Department, where my old office was, and Union Station, near my new office.
ISIS bride Shamima Begum has made a new appeal to be allowed to return to Britain, claiming she could be a ‘voice against radicalisation’.
The 22-year-old was stripped of her British citizenship in 2019 after she travelled to Syria at the age of 15. Now, she says she wants to be ‘used as an example’ to warn other Brits of the dangers of turning to extremism.
Begum, who left the UK in 2015 alongside friends Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, is now living in the Al-Roj prison camp in Syria, where she was captured.
The Western elites’ war on modern farming is a menace to humankind.
Justin Trudeau has joined the mad war on farmers. The king of virtue-signalling is insisting that nitrous oxide emissions be cut by 30 per cent by 2030. It’s all about Canada doing its bit for the planet, he says. But such a severe reduction in nitrogen-use would be disastrous for the planet. It would mean Canadian farmers being pressured to use less fertiliser, which would mean fewer crops, which would mean less food not only for the people of Canada but for people around the world. Saving the planet by starving human beings – even by the morally vacuous standards of a flimsy ruler like Trudeau, that is messed up.
It's stunning to watch the language of gender ideology capture institution after institution, all the way to the Vice Presidency of the United States. This isn't about pronouns; it's about signaling and then setting the expectation for ideological submission. https://t.co/ZjaNMQ6OeZ
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) July 26, 2022
The former Manitoba senator who chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada says there’s a “deep hole” in the apology issued by Pope Francis Monday for the role Catholics played in Canada’s residential school system.
Murray Sinclair says the historic apology, although meaningful to many residential school survivors and their families, fell short of Call to Action 58 in the final report.
It specifically called on the Pope to issue an apology “for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children in Catholic-run residential schools.”
Family doctor says the hill she will die on is allowing youth to get gender reassignment surgery and puberty blockers pic.twitter.com/UAqA42V1BT
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 26, 2022
Russian president Vladimir Putin has given the green light to a Black Sea grain export deal, the first major agreement between Moscow and Kyiv since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.
“This is an agreement for the world,” said UN secretary-general António Guterres on Friday. “It will bring relief for developing countries on the edge of bankruptcy and the most vulnerable people on the edge of famine. It will help stabilize global food prices which were already at record-levels even before the war.”
“… It is no coincidence, said study co-author Karen Chapple, that Toronto and San Francisco were two cities with some of the longest, deepest lockdowns during COVID-19. Other Canadian cities also lagged behind their U.S. counterparts.
“It’s clear. You look at that ranking chart and you look at the red cities, which are the Canadian ones, and Canada had much stricter lockdown policies than almost anywhere in the United States, with a couple of exceptions. The San Francisco area, sometimes New York were almost on the Canadian models,” said Chapple, director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto.”
Germany, historically the economic powerhouse of Europe, has been brought to its knees through its reckless pursuit of so-called “green energy,” while deliberately forfeiting its own energy security.
The disastrous result is a warning to all nations, including Canada, about the dangers of the ideological pursuit of low-carbon energy polices, without considering how they put reliable energy supplies at risk.
Greenpeace has been accused of making Britain more vulnerable to Russian blackmail by urging a judge to block drilling at a major North Sea gas field.
The eco campaign group claims Shell was wrongly granted a development licence for the Jackdaw field without proper environment checks last month, in defiance of the UK’s climate commitments.
It has brought a legal challenge against the Government and is vowing to frustrate other schemes brought forward in the North Sea as well.
Many Arabs believe that US President Joe Biden’s recent visit to the Middle East was a failure, mainly because the Arab countries still do not have confidence in his administration’s policies. The Arabs point out that one of Biden’s biggest mistakes was that he took America’s Arab allies for granted while embarking on a policy of appeasement towards Iran’s mullahs.
The Arabs are saying that Biden failed to promote normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, convince the Saudis to increase oil production, and establish a security alliance to confront the threats from Iran and its proxies. He also failed to achieve a breakthrough in the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, they note.
U.S. Military officials announced Friday a new program of teams from various sectors plan to create a subatomic particle compact source powerful enough to see through thick concrete walls, underground tunnels, and chambers hundreds of meters below the Earth’s surface.
‘Freedom Convoy’ organizer Tamara Lich to be released on bail, again
OTTAWA – “Freedom Convoy” organizer Tamara Lich has once again been ordered released from jail after the Ontario Superior Court found errors in the decision to revoke her bail two weeks ago.
Accountability may be coming for the failures that allowed a perp to murder 21 people in a Uvalde elementary school — but it may be coming slowly. Overnight, the school district announced without explanation that it had placed Robb Elementary principal Mandy Gutierrez on paid administrative leave …
The archbishop of Canterbury has been forced to allow Anglican bishops from all over the world the option of rejecting a statement on sexuality when they meet in Canterbury this week for the Lambeth conference.
The U-turn from Justin Welby, the leader of the global Anglican communion and the conference president, came late on Monday night, hours before 650 delegates began arriving for the 12-day meeting.
