David J. Bercuson: Canada must prepare for a future without the United States

There is an old saying in American politics: “If you want a friend in Washington, get yourself a dog.” Canada’s problem with U.S. President Donald Trump is clear: there isn’t a Canadian breed that would stay with him.

No one knows at this point whether or not Trump will go ahead with his punitive tariffs on Canada (and Mexico), thus risking a continent-wide trade war. But one thing is certain: Canada is no longer a special case in Washington, and the mutually beneficial relationship between Canada and the United States is almost dead.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada, USA

‘I feel angry and betrayed’: Ukrainians react to Donald Trump’s call to Putin

The first thing Olena Litovchenko thought, when she read the news of Donald Trump’s phone call to Vladimir Putin on Wednesday evening, was that it may finally be time for her to leave Ukraine.

“It feels like Ukraine is being screwed,” said Litovchenko, a personal trainer who was born in Kyiv and has stayed in the city throughout the three years of full-scale war. Believing the prospect of a Ukrainian defeat to be closer after Trump’s call and statements on Wednesday, she thought for the first time that she perhaps ought to leave, for the sake of her daughter. “But then, leave and go where? Europe is most certainly going to be next. Go to Australia? I don’t know. I feel angry and betrayed.”

Hegseth softens stance on Ukraine’s potential NATO membership

BRUSSELS — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday walked back a key piece of his dramatic remarks here at NATO headquarters a day prior, leaving open the possibility of Ukraine joining the military alliance after previously saying the United States does not believe membership for Kyiv is a “realistic outcome” in any peace deal with Russia.

Hegseth’s clarification appeared designed to assuage the backlash, in Washington and in Europe, ignited by his remarks hours before President Donald Trump announced his administration had jump-started negotiations to end the three-year war.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Ukraine - Russia", President Trump

Trump takes aim at Canada’s digital services tax, NATO contributions

Canada’s digital services tax is in Donald Trump’s crosshairs.

The U.S. president signed a presidential memorandum Thursday afternoon calling for a “fair and reciprocal” trading plan, and one of his targets is Canada’s digital services tax.

“Though America has no such thing, and only America should be allowed to tax American firms, trading partners hand American companies a bill for something called a digital service tax,” a White House fact sheet on Trump’s memorandum said, adding that France and Canada collect $500 million (U.S.) a year in DST from American firms. The memo gives U.S. trade officials 180 days to study trade and come up with a plan for reciprocal tariffs.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada, USA

Trudeau gov’t lied ‘more aggressive reductions’ needed to stem population growth: Report

Despite an October pledge by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to drastically reduce immigration, the country’s population continues to grow at a high rate, a new report finds.

The Feb. 6 economic study from Desjardins titled ‘Is Canada’s Population Slowing According to Plan?’ finds that while international student admissions have decreased in the last four months, Ottawa is still allowing about the same amount of temporary foreign workers and permanent immigrants into the country.

The bottom line, the report authors say, is that the population growth isn’t about to change without “more aggressive reductions.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Mass Immigration - Follow the money", "Societally Destructive Immigration Policy", Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government

If Sudanese were Gazans, the West would care

In Sudan, there are no Jews to blame. There are “only” mass massacres of thousands of blacks, rapes, atrocities and millions of displaced people, and most of the killers are Arabs.

Tens of thousands of deaths and ten million refugees, but no one seems to have heard of it. And how could they? No one talks about it in this sort of Animal Farm 2.0 that has become the Western conscience and its media, where “all victims are equal but some are more equal than others”. The woke West is obsessed with the white man to the point that Goldman Sachs had a policy of excluding companies with boards of directors composed exclusively of white men from initial public offerings (IPOs).

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Islamophobia", Islam, Islam and violence, Sudan

Why isn’t it racist to call someone ‘stupid and white’?

By Sam Kerr’s strange logic, the penniless white alcoholic in the gutter is more powerful than Beyoncé or Michelle Obama

Sam Kerr – Racist

Sam Kerr, the star striker for the Chelsea women’s football team, has been found not guilty of racially aggravated harassment, after she called a Metropolitan policeman “stupid and white”.

In court, Ms Kerr – who is mixed race – did not deny saying those words. Indeed, there was video footage of her saying them, inside Twickenham police station after a drunken night out. She did, however, deny that she was being racist. And ultimately the jury agreed with her.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Anti-White Racism"

Meet the new Liberals. Same as the old Liberals

A central theme of the Liberal leadership race, based on what the candidates are saying, is that they all represent a new iteration of the party and are not like those other Liberals who have been in power for close to a decade and who, you know, got so much wrong.

And that’s fine. Front-runners Chrystia Freeland and Mark Carney are perfectly welcome to try to distance themselves from a deeply unpopular government and label themselves as outsiders with fresh ideas. That’s politics.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada's Corrupt Liberal Government

Resettling Gaza Is it the right thing to do and can it work? Yes it can.

After President Donald Trump proposed resettling the Arab Muslim settlers currently living in Gaza, there was an outbreak of furious objections from politicians, activists and media outlets.

The objections could be roughly divided into the moral and the practical. The “moral” objection was that it is “wrong” to resettle the population currently occupying Gaza, and the “practical” objection was that it would be impossible to accomplish. Both objections do not hold up.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Oct 7 2023"

Erasing Escobar: Will Colombia ban the sale of memorabilia of the drug lord?

A proposed law in Colombia’s Congress seeks to ban the sale of merchandise that celebrates former drug lord Pablo Escobar. But opinions are divided on it.

On Monday, 27 November 1989, Gonzalo Rojas was at school in the Colombian capital of Bogota when a teacher pulled him out of class to deliver some devastating news.

His father, also called Gonzalo, had died in a plane crash that morning.

“I remember leaving and seeing my mum and grandma waiting for me, crying,” says Mr Rojas, who was just 10-years-old at the time. “It was a very, very sad day.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWTF?

In 2005, There Were 41 Communities Where a Middle-Class Family Could Afford to Buy a Home. Today, There’s Only Nine

A couple of weeks ago, we introduced our Weekly Housing Affordability Metric (WHAM) and showed how housing affordability has changed over time in Winnipeg, Edmonton, and London, Ontario. Naturally, readers wanted to know what the situation looked like in their city, so let’s take a look.

A WHAM score measures the number of weeks of pre-tax income needed to save for a 20% downpayment for a home and the first five years of mortgage payments, taking into account 5-year fixed mortgage rates, the median weekly wage in a province for 25-to-54-year-olds, and home prices.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis"

Pakistan couple beat child maid to death with a rolling pin over missing chocolate

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A Pakistani couple appeared in court on Thursday accused of murdering a child maid, who police said they beat with a rolling pin for allegedly stealing chocolate.

Thirteen-year-old Iqra, who had only one name, was taken to hospital in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Tuesday in a critical condition and later died of severe injuries.

… Child labour in domestic work remains widespread in Pakistan, according to an International Labour Organization report from 2022, with one in every four households employing a child in domestic work, predominantly girls aged 10-14.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Islamophobia", Islam, Islam and violence

Joly goes on what may be her last shopping trip as FM

Foreign affairs minister travelling to France, Germany and Belgium

OTTAWA — Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly is travelling to Europe today.

The minister will be in Europe until Feb. 18, traveling to France, Germany and Belgium to take part in conferences, meet with officials to discuss topics like geopolitical conflicts and foreign interference and speak in a roundtable on Arctic security.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada's Corrupt Liberal Government