Fall of Zelensky’s top aide – reboot for Kyiv or costly shake-up?

Andriy Yermak was a constant, looming presence in Ukraine’s government – a seemingly immovable figure on the political stage.

Despite his towering frame, you might not always have spotted him. Yet, wherever President Volodymyr Zelensky was, Yermak was often not far away.

As his chief of staff, Yermak wielded enormous power at the top of government and was even trusted to negotiate on Ukraine’s behalf at peace talks with the US.

But as his influence grew, so did public resentment of the power this unelected official held. His political career came to an abrupt end on Friday, hours after anti-corruption investigators raided his home in Kyiv.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Ukraine - Russia"

Canada Is a Magnet for Hamas Members and Ottawa Refuses to Act

Last week, a Global News investigation uncovered that roughly 450 individuals with various roles inside Hamas have ties to Canada. These include Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and others with relatives or associates here. CSIS did not confirm if these individuals are currently under scrutiny. Global reported the agency “was investigating Canadians in Middle East terror groups, but declined to elaborate.”

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Islamophobia", Canada, Islam, Islam and violence, Islamization of the West

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent moves to ‘cut off’ illegal migrants from tax benefits, cross-border money transfers: ‘No place for you in our financial system’

The Trump administration is working toward cutting illegal migrants off from federal tax benefits and money transfer services, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Friday.

“At [President Trump’s] direction, we are working to cut off federal benefits to illegal aliens and preserve them for U.S. citizens,” Bessent wrote on X.

As part of the effort, the Treasury Department will propose new regulations “clarifying that the refunded portions of certain individual income tax benefits are no longer available to illegal and other non-qualified aliens, covering the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Additional Child Tax Credit, the American Opportunity Tax Credit, and the Saver’s Match Credit,” according to the the Trump administration official.

Imagine a Canadian pol standing up for Canada like the Trump admin does for America. It just doesn’t happen.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCamp Of The Saints, USA

Steven Guilbeault was never going to last in Mark Carney’s cabinet

The news that Steven Guilbeault quit Prime Minister Mark Carney’s cabinet shouldn’t shock anyone who has followed the Quebec environmentalist’s long, combustible relationship with realpolitik. If anything, the only surprise is that the ending wasn’t scripted months ago.

During the last federal campaign, I noticed two posters standing only a few feet apart in the Montreal riding of Laurier–Sainte-Marie. One belonged to Guilbeault. The other to the local Green Party hopeful, Dylan Perceval-Maxwell. His sign carried an unusual footnote: “P.S. Voting for Steven Guilbeault is also voting green.”

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

London’s demographic change is unprecedented in peacetime

Most of the population has been replaced within a couple of generations

As a grizzled travel writer, I’ve picked up a few tips over the years. And one of them is this: if you want to understand a country quickly, take an urban food tour. You get to sample delicious scran, you learn how locals eat, drink and socialise and – crucially – as the chat flows, you hear the sort of throwaway facts that make you sit back in surprise.

So it was last night, for me, in Phnom Penh, the increasingly seductive, hedonistic capital of Cambodia. I was eating buffalo beef jerky with a spry fifty-something guy called Vannak, right outside the monastery where the young Pol Pot, the future communist tyrant then known as Saloth Sar, was a trainee monk.

The GTA is our London a 3rd World dumpster that will never recover.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inThe Great Replacement

Trump threatens Biden with ‘charges of perjury’ — says auto-penned orders ‘terminated’

President Trump claimed Friday that he was repealing all documents signed by former President Joe Biden using an autopen — and threatened to have his predecessor “brought up on charges of perjury” if he asserts that staffers were acting on his orders when using the mechanical.

Trump, 79, has for months characterized Biden, 83, as AWOL during his four-year term and claimed that unelected aides were running the country without authorization.

h/t XC

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Biden Family Sleaze", President Trump, USA

The Carney-Smith agreement surely won’t make pipelines ‘boring again’

Shortly after Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith formally signed their memorandum of understanding on Thursday, Smith joked to reporters in Calgary that she would love for “pipelines to be boring again.”

It’s not clear that pipelines have ever been boring — they have been associated with political tumult in Canada for at least 70 years. And given the great questions that are still tied up in both the idea and the reality of an interprovincial pipe — the unresolved work of reconciliation, the lack of a complete answer to the present and future threat of climate change, the fear for national unity — it is difficult to imagine that a pipeline could easily be made boring in this moment.

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

Teenager dies after being ‘tied up and thrown into swamp in honour killing because her “Western behaviour” shamed the family – before father fled to Syria’

A teenager died after she was tied up and thrown into a swamp to drown in an honour killing because her Western behaviour shamed her family, according to prosecutors in the Netherlands.

Ryan Al Najjar’s brothers have now been put on trial for her murder, while her father, who is accused of ordering the killing, fled the country to return to Syria.

Mohamed, 23, and Muhanad Al Najjar, 25, are charged with taking part in the horrific crime against their 18-year-old sister, whose body was found gagged with her hands bound behind her back, ankles taped together, and submerged in a swamp six days after she vanished from the family home in Joure.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Islamophobia", Honor Killings, Islam, Islam and violence, Islamization of the West, Netherlands

Derek Finkle: Toronto’s South Riverdale injection site was infested with drug dealers

Dr. Ahmed Bayoumi, a prominent harm reduction researcher known as the godfather of Toronto’s injection sites, provided testimony in a court hearing early this year that asserted there is “no evidence” that such sites “lead to increased drug selling.”

Bayoumi’s testimony was contained in an affidavit he provided as an expert witness in litigation initiated by an injection site in Toronto’s Kensington neighbourhood that argued a new Ontario law prohibiting such sites within 200 meters of schools and daycares violates the Charter rights of drug users.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inDrug Legalization, Drugs

Galleons, gold and greed: the quest to claim an $18bn shipwreck

The San José was no ordinary galleon. When the Spanish ship was sunk by the British off the coast of Colombia in 1708, it was carrying one of the richest cargos ever assembled in the Americas.

Its loss set in motion a three-century hunt for the “holy grail” of shipwrecks.

It returned to global attention this week after the Colombian government announced it had retrieved the first artefacts from a vessel experts say could be worth $18 billion (£13.6 billion).
Gold coins, porcelain cups and a cannon were brought to the surface: tantalising hints of what may still lie on the sea bed.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWTF?