Assad’s Fall Upends the Middle East’s Largest Drug Empire

The fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad overturned the most profitable drug-smuggling network in the Middle East, exposing the former regime’s role in manufacturing and trafficking pills that fueled war and social crises across the region.

Captagon, a methamphetamine-like drug that has been produced for years in Syrian labs, helped the Assad regime amass huge wealth and offset the impact of punishing international sanctions, while also allowing allies such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia to profit from its trade.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inSyria

America’s best decade, according to data

32 Pepsi Cola Adverts For Adults Living The American Dream (1950s)

One simple variable, more than anything, determines when you think the nation peaked.

The plucky poll slingers at YouGov, who are consistently willing to use their elite-tier survey skills in service of measuring the unmeasurable, asked 2,000 adults which decade had the best and worst music, movies, economy and so forth, across 20 measures. But when we charted them, no consistent pattern emerged.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inUSA

Foreign reports on Trudeau’s fall from grace

Worthwhile Canadian Resignation

It may be that Chrystia Freeland could have resigned even more dramatically from Justin Trudeau’s government in Canada, though it would have taken something akin to kneeing him in public. But after the humiliation the prime minister visited on one of his most loyal and talented Cabinet ministers, he should have seen it coming.

The rise and fall of Justin Trudeau as Canadian prime minister is on the brink

Once the poster-boy for liberal politics, his popularity has waned and his approval rating has dipped below 30 per cent several times this year.

Trudeau in peril after spat over Trump threat sparks crisis

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has been thrown into fresh disarray with the abrupt departure of his finance minister, Chrystia Freeland.

Canada: Trudeau’s Stumbling Government Appears on Verge of Collapse

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has been fending off no-confidence votes and calls for his resignation for months, found his position increasingly perilous on Monday following the resignation of his deputy prime minister and minister of finance, Chrystia Freeland.

Justin Trudeau Nears the End in Canada

Canada’s press is reporting that Justin Trudeau may resign as Prime Minister, and why keep the country in pain any longer? The Liberal government has been on political life support for some time, and our neighbors to the north deserve a new election.

Trudeau’s own party turn on him to resign

Justin Trudeau is under mounting pressure – including from his own MPs – to step down as Canada’s prime minister before the end of the year.

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

Why I’m leaving the UK

Prissy moralists have killed artistic licence

The United Kingdom is a totalitarian hellscape. Freedom of speech has been all but abolished. Our police forces are now indistinguishable from the Gestapo. Criticism of the government will soon be illegal under imminent laws against thought crime. It will not be long before artists, political dissidents and other freethinkers will be rounded up and tossed into gulags…

Even with my love of melodrama, I cannot sustain such histrionics. While it’s enjoyable to momentarily inhabit the caricature of the Andrew Doyle that exists in the minds of my detractors, the truth is far less exciting. On a recent appearance on the Jordan B. Peterson podcast, I let it be known that I am leaving the United Kingdom to work with the actor and comedian Rob Schneider on a new production company called No Apologies Media. Some of my friends have assumed that I am flouncing away out of a desperate conviction that all is lost. The reality is a little more nuanced.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inUK

Minnesota and New Hampshire Satanists Face Backlash After Erecting Satanic Holiday Displays on City Property

In what is becoming an unfortunate annual practice, Satanists in two states have tested the First Amendment by setting up Satanic Christmas displays on city property.

Naturally, the displays, one in Concord, New Hampshire, and the other in St. Paul, Minnesota, have been met with widespread disdain and disapproval.

The Concord display—a statue of the demon Baphomet erected by the Satanic Temple (TST) near the State Capitol— was in fact vandalized within hours of its assembly.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWTF?

Liberals slot nearly $600M for gun confiscation in new spending

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in Monday’s Fall Economic Statement indicated plans to spend $597.9 Million over three years to confiscate Canadians’ firearms.

So far Ottawa has blown through roughly $100 million already in attempts to collect government-licensed firearms — without collecting a single gun.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada's Corrupt Liberal Government, Gun Control, Gun Rights

Joe Oliver: We’re witnessing the implosion of the Trudeau Liberals in real time

Last Friday, the prime minister fired his finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, who shocked the country by resigning from cabinet on Monday, hours before the fall economic statement (FES) was set to be tabled. Yet obvious tension between the two made the resignation less surprising, especially since the FES abandoned any lingering pretense of fiscal prudence, along with Freeland’s primary fiscal guardrail — a cap on the 2023-24 deficit at $40.1 billion.

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

What A Little Bitch! Trudeau told Freeland that Carney would replace her as finance minister over Zoom

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Chrystia Freeland in a Zoom call on Friday that she was going to be replaced as finance minister by former central banker Mark Carney, three Liberal sources say.

The sources say Mr. Trudeau was direct in the call, telling her that by Tuesday morning she would no longer be finance minister and that the job would be handed to Mr. Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England. The Prime Minister still expected her to deliver the economic and fiscal update on Monday that showed she would miss the government’s promised $40.1-billion deficit target by more than $20-billion.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada's Corrupt Liberal Government, WTF?

Freeland latest woman to exit cabinet, as others question Trudeau’s feminist credentials

Chrystia Freeland is just the latest high-profile woman to leave the federal cabinet after a clash with Justin Trudeau, prompting some critics to question the Liberal Prime Minister’s self-professed feminism.

Long before Ms. Freeland’s resignation as finance minister on Monday, other prominent female ministers have stepped aside after battles with Mr. Trudeau that boiled over into public view.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada's Corrupt Liberal Government, WTF?

With Chrystia Freeland gone, an arrogant Justin Trudeau stands alone, devoid of credibility

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had every opportunity to craft a dignified end to his near-decade leading Canada. He could have listened to the clear message from Canadians that they’d enough of him. He could have seen that nothing the Liberals tried reversed their long slide in popularity. He could have chosen his moment.

Now, the moment has been chosen for him. It is now. Chrystia Freeland has put a noose around his neck and pulled the trap. The finance minister’s resignation, and the way she did it, effectively ends the Trudeau government.

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