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Is Canada Really Warming?

By Tom Harris | American Thinker | January 30, 2026

Is Canada really warming at double the global average rate, as the Canadian government says it is? A new report says no, because the data Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) uses are apparently corrupted by fundamental mistakes, mistakes so severe that when corrected, all the supposed warming of the past six or seven decades vanishes.

Given that Canada represents a large fraction of global land surface area, one naturally wonders if the world is warming at anything like we are told it is.

This discovery should have generated mainstream media headlines across Canada. After all, the mistakes in the Canadian temperature data were discovered over four years ago by Dr. Joseph Hickey, a highly qualified Canadian data scientist, and the group I lead, the International Climate Science Coalition – Canada, has been publicizing the story for the past month.

But don’t expect mainstream media in the Great White North to say anything about this. Most of Canada’s press are heavily subsidized by the federal and provincial governments, which would probably not appreciate the story being covered. Dr. Dave Snow, Associate professor in political science at the University of Guelph, writes:

“Canada has created a bevy of policies, ranging from subsidies to tax breaks to mandated contributions from foreign tech companies, that undoubtedly constitute a major portion of news outlets’ revenue and journalists’ salaries — potentially upwards of 50 percent.”

Publicly questioning government narratives on something as significant as climate change is a risky proposition for any editor when doing so leaves their paymasters with egg on their faces.

Here’s what governments in Canada — and the media outlets reliant on their largess — would rather you never heard. On December 23, the report “Artificial stepwise increases in homogenized surface air temperature data invalidate published climate warming claims for Canada” was released by Dr. Joseph Hickey, a data scientist with a PhD in Physics. The report was published by CORRELATION Research in the Public Interest regarding a significant error in Canada’s temperature data.

Using the data from ECCC for hundreds of stations across the country, scientists had previously calculated that the surface air temperature has increased 1-2 degrees Celsius over the past six to seven decades in Canada. Yet in 1998, the exact year in which 72 Canadian reference climatological stations were first added to the Global Climate Observing System, a sudden stepwise increase of approximately 1 degree Celsius occurred at most stations across the country.

Numerous studies in scientific literature assert that sudden temperature jumps like this are not due to real climactic change but instead are caused by temperature measurement artifacts corrupting the data. They contend that this data should therefore be removed from the record. Even though one of the studies explaining this was authored by Dr. Lucie A. Vincent, the senior Environment Canada Research Climatologist, the temperature jump was left in ECCC’s data and is still there to this day. Hickey concludes, “The reported climate warming of Canada appears to be entirely from a temperature measurement artifact.”

Hickey first discovered this in 2021 when he was as an analyst for the Bank of Canada and so was barred from sharing his findings with the public. After leaving the bank, he secured his communications with Environment Canada via an access to information, which is why we know what happened next.

In that year Hickey alerted Environment Canada to the problem and explained in detail to Vincent that the sharpness of the temperature increase, and its magnitude, indicate that it is not due to real climactic change. He also laid out a thorough analysis of potential sources of the artifact, which could include land use changes and instrumentation changes. Both of these could easily cause a one-degree shift in the temperature data. Moreover, he explained, “there are no other similar large and geographically widespread discontinuities in the AHCCD dataset [Environment Canada’s flagship temperature dataset] at other years.” This increase could be responsible for almost all the claimed warming calculated for Canada over the past six or seven decades.

Vincent essentially brushed him off, did not provide an explanation for the step increase, and said that the shift “is probably due to climate variability only.”

So, Canada is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to fight climate change largely based on data that the government scientist most involved in its generation can only say is “probably” indicative of warming.

Hickey was not the only Bank of Canada employee to find fault with ECCC’s temperature data. In his December report, he writes:

“On December 7, 2020, Bank of Canada Economist Julien McDonald-Guimond sent an email to Environment Canada researchers with an inquiry about the … daily temperature records, noting he had found some cases in which the daily minimum temperature was greater than the daily maximum temperature for the same day and for the same AHCCD station.”

In fact, there were more than 10,000 instances of days for which the daily minimum temperature was greater than the daily maximum temperature.

Environment Canada Climate Data Analyst Megan Hartwell replied to McDonald-Guimon, saying that “We were quite surprised by the frequency of the issue you reported, and have taken some time to go through the data carefully.”

That ECCC were surprised by McDonald-Guimond’s finding is cause enough to worry. But the fact that they now “have taken some time to go through the data carefully” begs the question: didn’t they go through the data carefully before releasing it the first time?

Environment and Climate Change Canada have yet to respond to Hickey’s December report. They have some explaining to do.

Tom Harris is Executive Director of International Climate Science Coalition – Canada.

February 7, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

‘Israel’ bulldozes part of Gaza war cemetery holding allied graves

Al Mayadeen | February 5, 2026

Israeli occupation forces have bulldozed sections of the Gaza War Cemetery in Gaza City’s al-Tuffah neighborhood, damaging graves of British, Australian, and other allied soldiers from the First and Second World Wars, according to an investigation by The Guardian.

Satellite imagery shows systematic earthworks in the cemetery’s southern corner, including removed gravestones, churned soil, and a large earth berm indicating the use of heavy machinery. The damage was not visible in images from March last year but appeared clearly in satellite photos taken in August and December.

Essam Jaradah, the cemetery’s former caretaker, told The Guardian that Israeli bulldozers first cleared land around the cemetery walls before later entering the graveyard itself, flattening nearly one dunum of land that included graves of Australian soldiers.

“The bulldozing covered the area from the bench where foreign visitors used to sit up to the memorial monument,” Jaradah said, adding that the operations took place after Israeli occupation forces withdrew from the area in late April or early May.

Israeli army cites combat operations

Responding to questions from The Guardian, the Israeli military command said the area was an “active combat zone” at the time and claimed its actions were taken for defensive reasons.

“At the relevant time, the area in question was an active combat zone,” a military spokesperson said, alleging the presence of underground “terrorist infrastructure” within and around the cemetery.

The Royal British Legion said it was “saddened” by reports that allied war graves had been damaged, stressing that such sites “deserve to be treated with the utmost respect”.

February 5, 2026 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

US traders struggling to find buyers for Venezuelan oil, as China shifts supply chain to Canada

Inside China Business | February 2, 2026

Following the US takeover of the Venezuelan oil industry, commodities trading firms were given contracts to market the crude to buyers across the world, including to China. But Venezuelan crude oil is now being sold at far higher prices than before, with the profits routed through US companies and energy traders. The higher prices have pushed Chinese refiners out of the market for the heavy crude from Venezuela, and they are shifting their orders to Canada, Russia, and Iran. Canadian tar sands oil is more expensive than Venezuelan heavy sour, but is similar, and offers far shorter transit times and lower shipping costs. Chinese energy traders have been instructed to refuse new offers for Venezuelan crude. Closing scene, Wulingyuan, Hunan Resources and links:

Reuters, Vitol, Trafigura offer Venezuelan oil to Indian, Chinese refiners for March delivery, sources say https://www.reuters.com/business/ener…

China replaces US barrels with crude from Canada https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/tan…

Trump’s Venezuela oil grab is pushing Chinese refiners to Canada (Not paywalled) https://calgaryherald.com/business/tr…

Reuters Exclusive: PetroChina holds off from buying Venezuelan oil marketed under US control, sources say https://www.reuters.com/business/ener…

Bloomberg, Trump’s Venezuela Oil Grab Pushes Chinese Refiners to Canada https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl…

Trump administration demands Venezuela cut ties with US adversaries to resume oil production https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/07/politi…

February 2, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Davos, Mark Carney’s frankness, and the Euro-American rift

By Raphael Machado | Strategic Culture Foundation | January 29, 2026

One of the defining factors of the era beginning from the second half of the 20th century is the partnership between the USA and Europe – initially only Western Europe, eventually most of the old continent. But “partnership” is perhaps an imprecise term. The ideal term would probably be “occupation,” since, as defined by Lord Ismay, NATO was created to “keep the Americans in, the Soviets out, and the Germans down.”

In the meantime, Europeans grew accustomed to an automatic alignment with the USA, quite similar to that of Ibero-American countries during the same period, with the exception of the brief period when Charles de Gaulle distanced his country from NATO. Otherwise, the Atlantic Alliance gradually absorbed European countries.

The confusion is such that when speaking of “Western civilization,” most people think of Europe and the USA together, not only as expressions of the same civilization but as possessing identical fundamental and strategic interests. The Davos Forum or World Economic Forum can be thought of as the “celebration” of this civilizational alliance, an event bringing together political, economic, and societal leaders from around the world to discuss the priorities to be adopted in the coming years.

Historically, the USA and its representatives have always been prominent at the Davos Forum in all discussions, whether on environmental issues, the supposed need to censor the internet, or the social transformations considered necessary to deal with the 2020 pandemic crisis or future health crises. It was a space for consensus and planning among the North Atlantic elites.

However, Trump’s antagonistic stance towards the countries of the European Union inevitably significantly changed the atmosphere of Davos this time.

The pressures and demands for the cession of Greenland, including the threat of using military force, ultimately became the driving force of interactions among the elites. Naturally, at this moment, EU countries would not be capable of mounting significant military resistance to the USA in Greenland. But the increase in European military presence on the Danish-owned island seems to serve simply as the drawing of a red line.

And despite Mark Rutte rushing to try to find some sort of compromise with Trump on the Greenland issue, the reality is that Trump’s mere threat and pressure against his supposed allies was enough to leave scars. In other words, no matter how timid and cowardly current European leadership may be, to the point of yielding time and again, European distrust and ill-will towards the USA is still likely to increase.

Perhaps it is even necessary to look at other sectors besides the political summit. Among intellectuals, think tanks, journalists, and influencers, it seems easier to find tougher and more critical positions regarding the USA, as well as less willingness to reconcile, than among national political leaders.

“Anti-Americanism,” once a central plank for both nationalist and socialist parties in Europe but fallen into disuse after the Cold War, may end up becoming an important discursive topic again in this era of rising diverse populisms.

To a large extent, the speech by Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, can be seen as a reasonable summary of the current geopolitical moment.

Throughout his speech in Davos, Carney emphasized that for decades, Canada and most Western countries remained aligned with the so-called “rules-based international order,” even considering it partly fictional; still, it was a useful and pleasant fiction. The other Western countries knew that these rules were not applied equally to all countries, and that stronger countries were practically exempt from most of their regulations. Everything in that order depended on who was the “accused” and who was the “accuser.” Different countries, engaged in the same actions, such as suppressing civilian protesters, for example, would receive different treatment depending on who their leaders and governments were: some would receive no more than a symbolic slap on the wrist, others would be bombed and have their heads of state executed in sham courts.

And these Western countries were satisfied as long as the bombed countries were African or Arab or, occasionally, some Slavic country like Serbia. This was because, for a few countries, that order allowed them to collect benefits in the form of capitalist extractivism.

Now, however, the international order has ended. It does not even survive as a farce – according to Carney himself. Faced with a series of crises, many countries began to perceive global integration more as an Achilles’ heel than as an advantage. Goods might have been cheaper, but what good is the theoretical availability of cheaper products when, in times of crisis, they become inaccessible, as during the health crisis. Or when sanctions simply make trade relations unviable for targeted countries.

For Carney, therefore, some countries have decided to transform themselves into fortresses, primarily concerned with ensuring their own energy, food, and military autonomy. And one of the basic consequences of this change is the decline of multilateral organizations. International courts, the WHO, the WTO, the World Bank, and various other bodies are increasingly ignored and disdained by regional powers – in the case of countries outside the “Atlantic axis,” because they consider the influence of the USA and its allies in these bodies too great; in the case of the USA, because, on the contrary, they consider that these bodies do not sufficiently serve US national interests.

This parallel and crosswise dissatisfaction is natural, to the extent that international institutions only ever served the USA and its hegemony insofar as that hegemony was the best tool for gradually constituting a “world government,” that “New World Order” proclaimed by George H. W. Bush.

The consequence of this process of collapse of globalist multilateralism is that international relations have come to be dominated by force. Most medium-power countries are not prepared to deal with this new and sudden reality. Moreover, it is naive to simply condemn the current situation and hope for a return to the “good old days” of a “rules-based” international order where the rules do not apply equally to everyone.

Carney also makes a suggestion for these medium-power countries to deal with the current international situation: strengthen bilateral relations with countries of similar mindset and orientation, building small coalitions of reasonably limited scope, aiming both to eliminate possible economic weaknesses and to enhance security mechanisms.

Naturally, Carney is specifically referring to strengthening Canada-EU relations, but, to some extent, we can also apply this kind of reflection to those counter-hegemonic or non-aligned countries that are not continental powers like Russia, China, and India. The case of Venezuela demonstrated that it is, in fact, necessary to be prepared to deal with US aggressiveness.

Countries like Brazil, despite its size and the importance given to it in international relations, lack nuclear weapons and sufficiently modern military forces to effectively protect itself against a focused and determined military action. Naturally, Brazil should seek to solve these deficiencies (and, indeed, the debate on “Brazilian nuclear weapons” has already begun in political, military, and social circles), but no significant change will be seen in the short term – which is why Brazil actually needs to develop other ways to guarantee its own security that do not depend on simple servility to the USA.

It would be fully in Brazil’s interests to lobby, within BRICS, for increasing the “security” dimension of the coalition. Still, we doubt that the current Brazilian administration has any interest in this, or even that it understands the need for such a radical transformation. In the absence of this initiative, at the very least, Brazil should seek to update its military, intelligence, and radar technology with the help of Russian-Chinese partnerships. But on a regional level, Brazil needs to strengthen its ties with other South American countries and begin, subtly, to try to attract them and remove them from the US orbit.

In short, the mere fact that we are discussing these needs, instead of naively betting that international forums created on Western initiative will be enough to defend us, already proves that we are already in a new and dangerous world.

January 29, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Davos and Abu Dhabi: How the Ukrainian Endgame Exposed Western Decline

By Ricardo Martins – New Eastern Outlook – January 28, 2026

While Russia, the United States, and Ukraine quietly negotiated in Abu Dhabi, Davos revealed Europe’s real position in the emerging world order: excluded from decision-making yet burdened with the costs of war and peace alike.

The 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos will likely be remembered less as a forum for global coordination than as a public autopsy of the Western-led international order.

What emerged in the Alpine setting was not coherence but fragmentation: rhetorical excess, strategic confusion, and an unmistakable sense that the world has already moved beyond the frameworks still defended—often ritualistically—by Euro-Atlantic elites.

Three speeches captured this moment with particular clarity: those of Volodymyr Zelensky, Mark Carney, and, less noticed but arguably most consequential, Chinese Vice-Premier Ding Xuexiang (represented in the Davos debate through He Lifeng’s economic message).

Zelensky and the Public Humiliation of Europe

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech was striking not only for its confrontational tone but also for its intended audience. His criticism was not primarily directed at Russia or even the United States, but bluntly at Europe. He accused the European Union of strategic indecision, military weakness, and an inability to guarantee Ukraine’s security, reiterating that Europe “still does not know how to defend itself” and remains structurally dependent on Washington.

Mocking Europe’s symbolic troop deployments to Greenland and its delayed reactions to crises such as Iran reinforced Zelensky’s humiliation of Europe.

This rhetoric can be understood as a final reckoning — an all-or-nothing move in which he burned all bridges and launched a frontal attack without regard for the consequences. By Davos, Kyiv was already aware that negotiations over the territorial concessions of the war were being discussed in Abu Dhabi between the United States, Russia, and Ukraine without European participation.

Zelensky’s speech thus functioned as political coercion aimed at Europe as the remaining actor capable of paying the price of a settlement. By publicly framing Europe as weak and morally indebted, Zelensky attempted to transform guilt into leverage in the final phase of negotiations.

This interpretation is reinforced by reporting in the Financial Times, which revealed that Ukraine’s willingness to consider territorial concessions is conditional upon accelerated EU membership, potentially by 2027. In domestic political terms, this trade-off allows Zelensky to reframe territorial loss as civilisational gain: Ukraine does not lose land; it “joins Europe.”

The bill, however, is addressed to Brussels.

Europe’s Astonishing Response

The European reaction to Zelensky’s speech in Davos bordered on political self-abnegation. Despite being publicly criticised, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen praised Ukraine’s “heroic struggle” and emphasised Europe’s material commitment rather than responding to the substance of Zelensky’s accusations.

This asymmetry—verbal humiliation met with renewed rhetorical loyalty—reveals a deeper structural problem: Europe’s inability to translate financial power into strategic agency.

Dissent has nevertheless emerged at the national level. Italian politicians, including Rossano Sasso and Matteo Salvini, openly criticised Zelensky’s “ungrateful” tone and questioned continued military and financial support.

Such reactions reflect mounting domestic pressures linked to inflation, energy costs, and war fatigue, documented extensively by Politico and the Kiel Institute.

Yet these voices remain fragmented, and Europe as a collective actor continues to display what can only be described as strategic paralysis.

Mark Carney and the End of the Rules-Based Illusion

If Zelensky exposed Europe’s weakness, Mark Carney articulated its anxiety. His Davos speech openly acknowledged what had long been implicit: the so-called “rules-based international order” is no longer operative—and perhaps never was. Carney framed the current moment as a rupture, arguing that “middle powers” such as Canada and European states must now navigate a world no longer structured by predictable norms but by power, leverage, and economic scale.

Carney’s concept of “value-based realism” deserves close scrutiny. On the surface, it appears as an attempt to reconcile normative language with geopolitical adaptation. In substance, however, it represents an effort to preserve Western managerial influence within a system that has already shifted towards multipolarity. Sovereignty, in Carney’s formulation, is diluted into “managed multipolarity,” administered by the same financial and institutional elites that dominated the previous order.

This is precisely why his discourse fails to resonate in the Global South. For emerging powers—particularly within BRICS—the collapse of the Western order is not a tragedy to be managed but a long-awaited correction. Carney’s speech, far from acknowledging this, sought to repackage decline as stewardship.

That it reportedly irritated Donald Trump is unsurprising: Carney implicitly rejected American unilateralism while simultaneously refusing genuine systemic change.

China and the Silent Centre of Gravity

The most consequential intervention in Davos was arguably not Western at all. Chinese Vice-Premier He Lifeng articulated Beijing’s strategic priority with remarkable clarity: China is positioning itself to become the world’s largest consumer market, making access to Chinese demand the central axis of future global trade.

This message, echoed by analysts such as Pepe Escobar, signals a structural shift in the global economy: dependence is moving eastward.

Unlike Carney’s rhetorical manoeuvres, China’s position was grounded in material capacity: industrial scale, domestic demand, and long-term planning. For much of the Global South, this represents opportunity rather than threat. For Europe, however, it underscores marginalisation.

Abu Dhabi Decides, Europe Pays

The trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi marked a geopolitical turning point. While Europe has committed close to €200 billion in support to Ukraine, it was excluded from negotiations shaping the war’s end.

This exclusion is not accidental. Both Washington and Moscow increasingly view Brussels as incapable of strategic compromise, bound instead by ideological rigidity and proceduralism.

Europe thus faces a brutal dilemma: continue financing a war it does not control, or finance a peace settlement that fundamentally alters the EU through accelerated Ukrainian accession. Neither option strengthens European sovereignty.

Granting Ukraine some lite-sort of membership by 2027—without completed accession chapters—would transform the EU’s budgetary, agricultural, and cohesion policies overnight. Yet postponement risks indefinite financial haemorrhage. As the Financial Times and Reuters have noted, peace may ultimately be cheaper than perpetual war, even if politically uncomfortable.

Conclusion: Europe as the Weakest Link

Davos revealed a system speaking past itself. Zelensky spoke from desperation and tactical clarity. Carney spoke from elite anxiety. China spoke from structural confidence. Europe, by contrast, spoke in platitudes.

The irony is stark. Europe funds Ukraine, absorbs the economic shock, and bears the political consequences—yet is excluded from decision-making. In Abu Dhabi, values were absent, and strategy was outsourced. When the deal is announced, Europe may discover it was not a negotiator, but a guarantor of last resort.

The tragedy is not merely Europe’s weakness, but its refusal to acknowledge it.

Ricardo Martins is a Doctor in Sociology with specialisation in geopolitics and international relations.

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January 28, 2026 Posted by | Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

European leaders’ shift in their Davos addresses exposes Europe’s strategic anxiety

Global Times | January 21, 2026

The World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting recently kicked off in the Swiss resort city of Davos. This year’s forum took place amid rare transatlantic tensions triggered by the US intention to acquire Greenland. The focus of European leaders’ speeches pivoted noticeably from global economic issues to geopolitics, reflecting Europe’s deepening strategic anxiety amid structural contradictions with the US.

French President Emmanuel Macron said the EU should not bend to “the law of the strongest,” while Belgium’s Prime Minister Bart De Wever said the bloc was “at a crossroads” where it must decide on how to get out of a “very bad position” after trying to appease Trump. Even European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen highlighted the “geopolitical shocks” and “a dangerous downward spiral” brought by the US.

“The forum sends a clear political signal of Europe’s growing strategic awakening,” Zhao Junjie, a senior research fellow at the Institute of European Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

The maximum pressure exerted by the US on the Greenland issue has shaken the long-standing value consensus between Europe and the US. Its unilateral and bullying actions have triggered strong fear and anxiety across Europe, which is a key reason for the heightened emotions and intense reactions toward the US among European representatives at this year’s forum.

The statements made by European leaders at the forum appear to have demonstrated Europe’s resolve to stand firm to the world. Yet it remains to be seen whether such firm commitments can be translated into practical, unified, and effective actions. As senior bankers and corporate executives at Davos noted, they believe the current responses of European leaders to the US are more emotional than pragmatic. Moreover, due to long-standing structural constraints – its deep entanglement with the US in security, energy, and economic affairs – Europe’s response is weak and constrained. Zhao further noted that Europe still lacks systematic measures to effectively counter American unilateralism, with current efforts largely limited to soft multilateral mechanisms.

Europe’s response to US unilateral pressures has been sluggish and lacking in internal coordination. The EU countries have not reached a consensus on the activation of Anti-Coercion Instrument. Meanwhile, Europe continues to grapple with “double standards” in its multilateral engagements. Despite the leaders’ calls for trade diversification, restrictive market-access policies toward certain foreign products have fueled ongoing trade tensions. This contradiction is illustrated by Macron’s appeal for Chinese investment in key sectors, even as the EU moves to phase out components and equipment from tech suppliers such as Huawei in some sectors – a policy that inevitably raises questions about Europe’s consistency and sincerity in pursuing cooperative partnerships.

Canada has already taken action. Prime Minister Mark Carney stated that middle powers are not “powerless” facing “a rupture in the world order.” He called for “honesty about the world as it is” and for building “something bigger, better, stronger, and more just.” Recently, Canada established strategic partnerships with China and Qatar to promote the diversification of its foreign relations. Such strategic sobriety may offer some inspiration for Europe.

Ursula von der Leyen declared in her special address that “Europe will always choose the world, and the world is ready to choose Europe.” Yet Europe must now answer a more pressing question: what path will it choose for itself in the changing global order?

The statements at Davos have sent a clear political signal of Europe’s awakening. Moving forward, Europe must consolidate its strength through unity, steer its own course with greater autonomy, and expand its strategic space through diversification. Confronted with external pressures, only by reinforcing internal solidarity, advancing pragmatic actions, and broadening multilateral cooperation can Europe truly safeguard its own interests and uphold the international multilateral order. Only in this way can Europe genuinely protect its interests amid profound changes. History does not wait for the hesitant – it is time for Europe to act.

January 22, 2026 Posted by | Economics | , , , , | 1 Comment

Mali holds firm: West eyes new front to sabotage Sahel independence

By Aidan J. Simardone | The Cradle | November 19, 2025

If you are to believe western media, Mali is days away from falling to Al-Qaeda. Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), a branch of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, is blockading fuel to the capital, Bamako. It is only a matter of time before growing frustration turns Malians against their “illegitimate” government. Or so the story goes.

The reality tells a different tale. The situation is serious, not only for Mali but also for the broader Alliance of Sahel States, which includes Burkina Faso and Niger. And yet, Mali is recovering. Russia has stepped in, delivering vital fuel shipments. Schools are reopening. Vehicles are back on the road. Towns previously captured by JNIM are being reclaimed.

It is a huge gamble for Russia. But should it succeed, Moscow will have secured a key ally and gained the favor of anti-imperialist countries in Africa. The risk, however, might not come from JNIM. Instead, it could come from a western-supported intervention that seeks not to stop Al-Qaeda, but to destroy the Alliance of Sahel States.

From French client to anti-colonial spearhead

After it gained independence, Mali continued to rely on France. Even its currency, the CFA franc, is pegged to the euro. In school, children were taught French history and learned to speak French. Until recently, France had 2,400 troops stationed as part of its “counterterrorism” operations.

Despite these apparent efforts, groups like JNIM, the Islamic State in the Sahel, and Azawad separatist militias grew. Meanwhile, western corporations profited as Mali became the fourth-largest producer of gold. With this wealth extracted, Mali remained one of the poorest countries in the world.

Bamako’s cooperation with the west did not always curry favor. Its alleged failure to follow the 2015 Algiers Accords with Azawad separatists resulted in the UN Security Council (UNSC) imposing sanctions in 2017. This made little impact, with Mali’s economy continuing to grow.

Yet most Malians were still in poverty, and the security situation worsened. Frustrated, a coup was launched in 2020. But when protests erupted, another coup followed in 2021, led by Assimi Goita, Mali’s current president. Western institutions portrayed it as democratic backsliding, with a military unjustly taking over the country. But the coup was highly popular, with people celebrating. According to a 2024 poll, nine out of 10 people thought the country was moving in the right direction.

President Goita was a radical, anti-colonial, pan-Africanist. In 2022, he kicked French troops out, instead seeking help from Russia. In 2025, Mali withdrew from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), accusing it of working with western powers. Goita nationalized the gold mines, removed French as Mali’s official language, and replaced school curricula about French history with Bamako’s own rich history.

Western-aligned institutions retaliated with sanctions. ECOWAS, the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), and the EU imposed economic penalties. Cut off from financial institutions, Mali defaulted on its debt. But the impact was partly muted.

A few months after sanctions were imposed, the court of the WAEMU ordered that sanctions had to be lifted. Gold mining, which contributes to 10 percent of the economy, saw no impact. Mali shifted its trade to non-ECOWAS countries, and the economy continued to grow.

The West African country redirected trade outside the ECOWAS bloc and resolved its debt in 2024. Far from isolating the country, sanctions strengthened internal solidarity.

Even when ECOWAS lifted sanctions in July 2022 – citing a transition plan to civilian rule – no action was taken when the deadline passed. The reason? The sanctions had backfired, exposing ECOWAS as a western instrument and bolstering support for the Goita government.

Map of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)

Sanctions failed, so proxy war begins

JNIM continues to receive financing from Persian Gulf patrons and income from ransoms and extortion. While it has a strong rural presence, it controls no major cities. Azawad separatists and ISIS fighters are similarly confined to Mali’s remote north.

A different strategy was needed. In recent weeks, JNIM has attacked fuel trucks, depriving Bamako of oil. Cars were unable to fill up, and schools closed. According to western media, JNIM wants to strangle the capital to promote unrest. Mali has had five coups since independence, three of which have occurred since 2012. News reports suggest that given this history, JNIM can ultimately topple the Malian government.

Reports of an “immediate collapse” are nearly a month old. What Western media fails to understand is that, unlike previous governments in Mali, the current one is highly popular. Truckers are willing to risk their lives to bring fuel to the capital. “If we die, it’s for a good cause,” one trucker said. Even if the blockade were to stop all fuel, Malian’s resilience and support for Goita would only increase.

Thankfully for Bamako, JNIM is facing setbacks. Russia, which provides support from the Africa Corps (formerly Wagner Group) and, in 2023, vetoed the UNSC’s sanctions, sent 160,000 and 200,000 metric tons of petroleum and agricultural products. This has provided some relief, with fuel lines shortening and schools reopening.

On 15 November, Mali and the African Corps seized the Intahaka mine. The next day, the town of Loulouni was also recaptured. That same day, the blockade south of Bamako was weakened, allowing convoys of fuel trucks to reach the city.

Manufacturing consent for intervention

So why does the western media continue insisting that Mali is collapsing? Simple: to justify military intervention.

One of the biggest propagandists has been France. In a post on X from the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Paris blamed Russia for abandoning Mali, despite being one of the only nations supporting it during this crisis. French news channels LCI and TF1 ran stories such as “Mali, the Jihadists at the gates of Bamako” and “Mali, the new stronghold of Al-Qaeda.”

In response, Bamako banned them from the country. Niger has also accused Benin of being a base of operations for France. French state media, France 24, did not deny the claim, only disputing that the number of soldiers was far less than Niger claimed.

France stands to regain a significant geopolitical advantage from regime change in Mali. The country borders seven former French colonies. A return would reassert French regional influence and weaken the anti-imperialist Alliance of Sahel States. Niger remains crucial to France’s uranium supply, which is necessary for 70 percent of the country’s energy. Bamako is also quickly becoming a major exporter of lithium – essential for electronics and electric cars – with the recent opening of its second mine.

Other western countries have also lost out under Goita’s rule. Canadian company Barrick Mining lost $1 billion when Mali nationalized the mining industry. Last month, other western firms, such as Harmony Gold, IAMGOLD, Cora Gold, and Resolute Mining, had their mining exploration licenses revoked.

The growing Russia–Mali partnership resembles Moscow’s 2015 intervention in Syria. Just as Russia propped up Damascus for as long as it could from a US-led proxy war, it now shores up Bamako. The payoff could be similarly strategic: diplomatic support, military basing rights, and influence in an emerging multipolar Africa.

Unlike past interventions cloaked as counterterrorism, the west now appears reluctant. Washington and its allies, usually quick to bomb under any pretext, have done nothing to aid Bamako. This silence suggests either tacit support for JNIM or confidence that Mali will implode without direct action.

Outsourcing war

As a member of the Alliance of Sahel States, the west fears that Mali’s resilience will be an inspiration to others to join the anti-imperialist struggle. The 2021 coup emerged as a result of inequality and insecurity. These factors can be found in many other West African countries such as Benin, the Ivory Coast, and Togo.

Some observers theorize that Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, could soon have a revolution, amid high inequality and insecurity from Boko Haram. Nigeria’s growing ties with Mali are a serious threat to the west.

With sanctions failing to bring Mali to its knees, the only solution for the west is military intervention. This might be direct, as seen with Niger, where French troops are stationed in bordering Benin. But more likely, western countries will outsource their intervention to African states. This has occurred in Somalia, where the US has Kenya and Uganda do its dirty work in return for aid. The same could occur with Mali.

The most likely actors to play this role are ECOWAS and the African Union. ECOWAS receives military training from the US, and many of its leaders are closely tied to Washington. It also receives extensive financing from the EU, most recently receiving €110 million ($119 million) to support “peace, trade, and governance.” Far from neutral, it has become an enforcement arm for western interests. The bloc has previously sanctioned Mali and, in 2023, threatened to invade Niger.

The African Union has also served the interests of the west, such as the African Union Mission to Somalia, which is supported and financed by Washington and Brussels. The African Union Constitutive Act prohibits military intervention in any member state, with the exception of war crimes or at the request of the state.

Mali, however, was suspended from the African Union in 2021, making intervention fully legal under the Act. Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, recently called for “urgent international Action as crisis escalates in Mali.”

Bamako versus the empire 

Mali faces a two-pronged assault: economic strangulation and the threat of foreign-backed military intervention.

Though JNIM remains a nuisance, it has failed to topple the government. The bigger threat comes from western capitals and their African proxies. Russia remains one of Mali’s few reliable allies. If successful, Moscow’s support will elevate its standing across the continent.

More importantly, Mali’s endurance will inspire other African states to challenge western domination and reclaim sovereignty.

November 19, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran rejects Canada’s baseless claims of foiling ‘lethal plots’ by Tehran

Press TV – November 15, 2025

Iran has strongly dismissed allegations of sabotage operations raised by the head of Canada’s domestic Security Agency against the Islamic Republic, calling the claims baseless and fabricated.

On Thursday, Dan Rogers, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, claimed that the agency this year foiled potentially lethal threats by Iran directed against people whom Tehran sees as enemies.

He claimed that the agency countered actions by Iranian intelligence services and what he called their proxies, who allegedly targeted individuals they perceived as threats to Iran.

Rogers also alleged that his agents had blocked attempts by Russia to illegally acquire Canadian goods and technologies. He also levelled some accusations against China and India for espionage and transnational repression efforts against Canada.

Zahra Ershadi, Iran’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, said in a statement on Friday that the allegations were aimed at shifting attention away from Israel’s ongoing actions in West Asia and Canada’s role in supporting them.

“The ridiculous accusations of the Canadian Security Organization against Iran have no purpose other than to divert attention from the ongoing violations and crimes committed by the Zionist regime in the West Asia region and Canada’s support for it,” she said.

Ershadi also criticized the obstruction of consular services for Iranians living in Canada, urging the Canadian government to reverse “irresponsible and unjustified” policies toward Tehran.

During the genocide in Gaza, Canada and several other Western countries continued to supply lethal weapons to the Israeli regime despite the enormous human toll in Palestinian territory.

November 15, 2025 Posted by | Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Farming in Russia vs the West

RealReporter | September 22, 2025

In this collab with ‪@countrysideacreshomestead2008‬ I visit a Canadian family who moved to rural Russia to start a homestead from scratch.

Why they came to Russia –    • Family of 10 Leaves Canada for ‘Economic O…  

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October 14, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Video | , | Leave a comment

Canada’s Privacy Watchdog Not Consulted on Bill C-8, Enabling Secret Internet & Phone Shutdowns

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | October 13, 2025

Legislation that would allow federal ministers to secretly order telecom providers to cut off a Canadian’s phone or internet access is advancing without any input from the country’s top privacy authority.

Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne told a Commons committee that his office was never asked to review Bill C-8 before it was introduced.

The bill would authorize the cabinet to compel telecom companies to block services to individuals considered a security threat, without needing a judge’s approval or any public disclosure.

“The issue never came up,” Dufresne said during testimony before the House of Commons ethics committee. He confirmed, “We are not consulted on specific pieces of legislation before they are tabled.”

Bill C-8 would allow the federal cabinet to direct a telecom provider to deny all services to a specific person, based solely on the government’s assessment of a threat. No warrant would be required. No independent body would be tasked with reviewing the decision.

Conservative MP Michael Barrett raised an alarm over what he described as a dangerous overreach. He said the bill would allow the government to quietly seize control of individuals’ communications, with no transparency and no legal checks.

“Without meaningful limits, bills like C-8 can hand the government secret powers over Canadians’ communications,” said Barrett. “It’s a serious setback for privacy and for democracy.”

He pressed Dufresne on whether Parliament should be required to conduct privacy assessments before passing legislation with such broad surveillance potential.

“Isn’t Parliament simply being asked to grant sweeping powers of surveillance to the government without a formal review?” Barrett asked.

Dufresne responded, “It’s not a legal obligation under the Privacy Act.”

While acknowledging the importance of national security, Dufresne warned that such measures must not override core privacy protections. “We need to make sure that by protecting national security, we are not doing so at the expense of privacy,” he said.

A previous version of the idea, Bill C-26, failed in an earlier Parliament after concerns over its civil liberties implications.

October 13, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

The Doctor Will Kill You Now

By Clayton J. Baker, MD | Brownstone Institute | October 9, 2025

Way back in the B.C. era (Before Covid), I taught Medical Humanities and Bioethics at an American medical school. One of my older colleagues – I’ll call him Dr. Quinlan – was a prominent member of the faculty and a nationally recognized proponent of physician-assisted suicide.

Dr. Quinlan was a very nice man. He was soft-spoken, friendly, and intelligent. He had originally become involved in the subject of physician-assisted suicide by accident, while trying to help a patient near the end of her life who was suffering terribly.

That particular clinical case, which Dr. Quinlan wrote up and published in a major medical journal, launched a second career of sorts for him, as he became a leading figure in the physician-assisted suicide movement. In fact, he was lead plaintiff in a challenge of New York’s then-prohibition against physician-assisted suicide.

The case eventually went all the way to the US Supreme Court, which added to his fame. As it happened, SCOTUS ruled 9-0 against him, definitively establishing that there is no “right to die” enshrined in the Constitution, and affirming that the state has a compelling interest to protect the vulnerable.

SCOTUS’s unanimous decision against Dr. Quinlan meant that his side had somehow pulled off the impressive feat of uniting Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and all points in between against their cause. (I never quite saw how that added to his luster, but such is the Academy.)

At any rate, I once had a conversation with Dr. Quinlan about physician-assisted suicide. I told him that I opposed it ever becoming legal. I recall he calmly, pleasantly asked me why I felt that way.

First, I acknowledged that his formative case must have been very tough, and allowed that maybe, just maybe, he had done right in that exceptionally difficult situation. But as the legal saying goes, hard cases make bad law.

Second, as a clinical physician, I felt strongly that no patient should ever see their doctor and have to wonder if he was coming to help keep them alive or to kill them.

Finally, perhaps most importantly, there’s this thing called the slippery slope.

As I recall, he replied that he couldn’t imagine the slippery slope becoming a problem in a matter so profound as causing a patient’s death.

Well, maybe not with you personally, Dr. Quinlan, I thought. I said no more.

But having done my residency at a major liver transplant center in Boston, I had had more than enough experience with the rather slapdash ethics of the organ transplantation world. The opaque shuffling of patients up and down the transplant list, the endless and rather macabre scrounging for donors, and the nebulous, vaguely sinister concept of brain death had all unsettled me.

Prior to residency, I had attended medical school in Canada. In those days, the McGill University Faculty of Medicine was still almost Victorian in its ways: an old-school, stiff-upper-lip, Workaholics-Anonymous-chapter-house sort of place. The ethic was hard work, personal accountability for mistakes, and above all primum non nocere – first, do no harm.

Fast forward to today’s soft-core totalitarian state of Canada, the land of debanking and convicting peaceful protesters, persecuting honest physicians for speaking obvious truth, fining people $25,000 for hiking on their own property, and spitefully seeking to slaughter harmless animals precisely because they may hold unique medical and scientific value.

To all those offenses against liberty, morality, and basic decency, we must add Canada’s aggressive policy of legalizing, and, in fact, encouraging industrial-scale physician-assisted suicide. Under Canada’s Medical Assistance In Dying (MAiD) program, which has been in place only since 2016, physician-assisted suicide now accounts for a terrifying 4.7 percent of all deaths in Canada.

MAiD will be permitted for patients suffering from mental illness in Canada in 2027, putting it on par with the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland.

To its credit, and unlike the Netherlands and Belgium, Canada does not allow minors to access MAiD. Not yet.

However, patients scheduled to be terminated via MAiD in Canada are actively recruited to have their organs harvested. In fact, MAiD accounts for 6 percent of all deceased organ donors in Canada.

In summary, in Canada, in less than 10 years, physician-assisted suicide has gone from illegal to both an epidemic cause of death and a highly successful organ-harvesting source for the organ transplantation industry.

Physician-assisted suicide has not slid down the slippery slope in Canada. It has thrown itself off the face of El Capitan.

And now, at long last, physician-assisted suicide may be coming to New York. It has passed the House and Senate, and just awaits the Governor’s signature. It seems that the 9-0 Supreme Court shellacking back in the day was just a bump in the road. The long march through the institutions, indeed.

For a brief period in Western history, roughly from the introduction of antibiotics until Covid, hospitals ceased to be a place one entered fully expecting to die. It appears that era is coming to an end.

Covid demonstrated that Western allopathic medicine has a dark, sadistic, anti-human side – fueled by 20th-century scientism and 21st-century technocratic globalism – to which it is increasingly turning. Physician-assisted suicide is a growing part of this death cult transformation. It should be fought at every step.

I have not seen Dr. Quinlan in years. I do not know how he might feel about my slippery slope argument today.

I still believe I was correct.

C. J. Baker, M.D., 2025 Brownstone Fellow, is an internal medicine physician with a quarter century in clinical practice. He has held numerous academic medical appointments, and his work has appeared in many journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine. From 2012 to 2018 he was Clinical Associate Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Rochester.

October 10, 2025 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Free Speech After Charlie Kirk: an American Lesson for Pam Bondi, Donald Trump & Netanyahu

By Ilana Mercer | LewRockwell.com | October 4, 2025

Let us be clear about what freedom of speech à la America truly means:

The words people speak, chant, write and tweet; the beliefs they are known to hold, the flags they fly or burn, the symbolic, non-violent ceremonies and rituals they enact, the insignia, paraphernalia; the goose-stepping, Hitler salutes they muck around with—provided no physical aggression is involved (violence against animals included), all this counts as protected speech, licit in natural law.

So long as oddities and idiosyncrasies, whether performed alone or in groups, thoughts harbored privately or shared in public—so long as no violence accompanies such speech or behavior; so long as your mitts stop at the next man’s face (or at the next mutt’s fury face, Kristi Noem): SPEECH. It’s all speech. It should be free, unfettered and as wild and as wanton as can be.

At their worst, expressions of ostensible antisemitism, Naziism, racisms or other antipathies amount to thought crimes, nothing more, if expressed as a belief system severally or collectively, rather than in palpably violent actions.  Whether your thoughts are spoken, chanted, written or preached; be they impolite or impolitic: they are, at worst, no more than thought crimes.

Thought crimes are nobody’s business in a free society. Thought crimes ought to be ferociously protected by a free people. By logical extension, any accusations of antisemitism, Naziism or other antipathies and racisms, are especially suspect when emitted as a meme from American institutionalized power structures.

One such obscenely wealthy and worthless power structure is the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), or Defamation League—a more apt moniker once suggested by Elon Musk, before he joined the ADL in severely censoring some speech on the X platform. The ADL is a meddlesome shakedown operation, in the mold of the Southern Poverty Law Center (“Smear Artists for the Total State,” wrote Tom DiLorenzo). It has taken it upon itself to decide who lives and who dies socially and financially on the basis of the unfortunate individual’s ideas, spoken and written.

In the American tradition, thoughts and words spoken or written that are politically impolite—again, racism; Naziism, antisemitism—retain protected status as speech beyond the adjudication of law-makers, bureaucrats, mediacrats, educrats and technocrats.

Sniffing out racists or anti-Semites is an absolute no-no for any and all self-respecting, libertarian-minded Americans, or any American, for that matter. Like creedal libertarians, Americans don’t, or should not, prosecute thought crimes or persecute thought “criminals.”

Ours should be The Skokie Standard of free speech and thinking (which I articulated in August 2022). What is The Skokie Standard of free speech? In 1978, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took a stand for free speech by defending a neo-Nazi group that wanted to march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, where many Holocaust survivors lived. The Skokie Standard of free speech is one that champions unpopular expression, and vigorously defends all marginalized speakers and thinkers, rather than purveying and protecting state and corporate ideology du jour.

Let me repeat what the Skokie Standard of free speech stands for here: However which way they are grouped, the words people individually or collectively speak, chant, write and tweet; the beliefs they are known to hold, the flags they fly or stomp, the symbolic, non-violent ceremonies, rituals and protests they perform; the insignia, paraphernalia, the goose-stepping, Hitler salutes they dick around with—provided no physical aggression is involved, all that counts as protected speech.

Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, RIP, got it. On May 2, 2024, Kirk wrote the following: “Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”

Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi doesn’t get it. No wonder even Glenn Greenwald, once a practicing constitutional attorney—and a man of manners and decorum—regularly appends “dumb” and “lacking any grasp of constitutional law” to any mention of Bondi, who said this after Kirk’s murder:

The Justice Department would “absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech… There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech. And there is no place—especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie — [for that] in our society,” Bondi told a podcaster likewise cerebrally compromised.

If you thought the nation’s chief law enforcement officer had blurted out on an impulse such promises of unconstitutional hate-speech prosecutions; I’m sorry to say that Bondi only doubled down. In scant regard for the letter and spirit of American constitutional law, she advised employers, on September 15, of their “obligation to get rid of people who are saying horrible things.”

While “The First Amendment doesn’t stop private employers from choosing to fire people for speech; it can be illegal for the government to use its power to pressure a private company into firing a staff member.” In America, not even do celebrations of Kirk’s assassination count as threats of violence or incitement to violence. In fact, “government retribution for speech,” lambasted U.S. District Judge William Young, a Reagan appointee, “is directly forbidden by the First Amendment.”

For our libertarian purposes, moreover, speech should never be defended by deploying a contents-driven defense, such as that a book, an utterance or their author must be spared on account that the person is good and his words are not racist and are against bigotry.

The Argument from Freedom means arguing process, not content. Racism, (alleged) antisemitism or Naziism in targeted literature or in protests should always and everywhere be a peripheral issue. Or, preferably, no issue at all.

The Argument from Freedom means arguing not over the contents of publications like Mein Kampf or the merit of protests for Palestine, but for their publication and practice irrespective of their contents. Which is why I say freedom’s argument is an argument from process, not content.

Freedom makes the case for an unfettered free market in ideas, good and bad. Freedom argues for politically impolite books to be published and read freely. It demands that all offensive literature be available to the free men and women who inhabit the free society. And not because of history; so that we don’t forget it or repeat it. Rather, freedom needs no justification. It is an end unto itself. You are deficient in American solidarity if you don’t stand up for non-violent protest and all speech.

Liberty is a simple thing. It’s the unassailable right to shout, flail your arms, and verbally provoke people in power, unmolested. Tyranny is when those small things can get you assaulted, incarcerated, injured, deported, even killed.

Ultimately banning books or proscribing speech and speakers as the kangaroo courts of Britain, Europe and Canada do legally, assumes a lack of choice and agency among ostensibly “free” human beings. It’s also predicated on the acceptance of a higher authority which decides for the rest of us which cultural products are fit for our consumption.

I thus put it to you, dear reader, left and right, that speech restrictions stateside in the form of the Antisemitism Awareness Act mirror the worst of British and western Europe’s anti-speech tribunals. Tabled by a Republican and a Democrat, S. 4127, which mercifully is still in committee, would embed state agitprop throughout American education. For posterity. Aside being in violation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the Antisemitism Awareness Act would utterly enervate discourse in our country and criminalize vast tracts of speech as well as proscribe actions that are licit in constitutional and natural law.

Left, Right and libertarian; we can and must, then, join in unapologetically rejecting the very idea of policing, purging, persecuting or prosecuting people for holding and expressing politically unpopular ideas in action or in speech.

October 6, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | 1 Comment

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