The former and near-future Oval Office occupant has mused about buying Greenland, making Canada the 51st state, reclaiming the Panama Canal and renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. All these things have (or are) major hotties in the geopolitical real estate sense to the career developer, and the former Miss Universe pageant owner is talking like he’s long been eyeing up their wares. And now he wants to grab them by the assets.

Trump isn’t even back in the White House quite yet, but already his public musings are reshaping the global political landscape. Leftists can only dream of actually changing the world on the same scale with their comparatively lame and contrived performance art provocations.

So-called progressives have produced chef d’oeuvres like the green “butt plug” sculpture called “Tree” that imposed itself on Paris’ city center about a decade ago.

There was also Russian “artist” Petr Pavlensky’s attempted arson of the Russian security service headquarters in Moscow, resulting in a fine, or the spectacle of him nailing his own scrotum to Red Square, before ultimately moving to Paris, where he was sentenced to prison for setting fire to the Bank of France in yet another presentation.

Way to change the world, guys.

Trump, on the other hand, has managed to single-handedly achieve results, with just a few provocative words, that have long been the dream of populists around the world seeking to reclaim power from globalists running our Western nations. To find a time when Canada’s political class didn’t behave as though the country were already the 51st state, one must look back to 2003, when then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien refused to follow President George W. Bush into the ill-fated invasion of Iraq.

“I called him Governor Trudeau,” Trump said recently of Canada’s prime minister, “Because they should be the 51st state, really. It would make a great state.”

Canada has tagged along on every recent U.S.-led foreign intervention, chimed in to echo every Washington talking point, and has failed to chart any diplomatic or economic course independent of the U.S., making the country vulnerable to U.S. whims and limiting its bargaining position. It’s only now that Trump has openly mused about Canada effectively just being seen as an American vassal that the entire Canadian establishment is suddenly standing up to the idea for the first time in ages.

“There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States,” Trudeau wrote on social media.

“I have the strength and the smarts to stand up for this country and my message to incoming President Trump is that first and foremost, Canada will never be the 51st state of the U.S.,” said poll-leading Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre on CTV News.

At what point did either of these guys realize that Canada’s interests weren’t just a copy-pasted version of America’s? Apparently, it took Trump to spell it out like a drunken guy in a bar instead of deploying the smooth talking that they’re used to from Washington.

Next thing you know, Canada will be asking for a defense pact with its Arctic neighbor, Russia, in light of the threats. Frankly, geopolitical “dating around” should have already long been the case on the trade front, at the very least. It’s only because of a lack of political courage vis-a-vis the U.S. that it isn’t. Other U.S. allies have enjoyed an official policy of non-alignment and deal with everyone and anyone — like India, much of Africa, and Asia. And even America’s southern neighbor, Mexico.

About Denmark and the European Union’s overseas territory, resource-rich Greenland, Trump has said that he wants to buy it – using economic or military force if necessary. For “national security” purposes, of course. Which is like a guy saying that he’s attracted to you for your intellect. His son, Donald Trump Jr., even showed up in Greenland with some political activist pals in tow. Nothing wins over hearts and minds like a dude musing about how much he’s into you while his people show up at your front door.

While Greenland is currently eyeing independence from Denmark, they say that it doesn’t mean that they want to jump into another serious relationship. And they’re certainly not into being treated like some kind of a prostitute.

European leaders initially sat quietly in the corner, watching Trump attempting to make cuckolds of them and musing about having his way with Greenland, before finally reacting.

“No country is the backyard of another, no country should have to fear its bigger neighbors. That is a central part of what we call Western values,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose country is literally the backyard of the US, and littered with dozens of bases.

Biden overtly threatened Germany’s economic lifeline of cheap Russian gas through its Nord Stream pipeline, before it was mysteriously just blown up altogether, making Germany and Europe overdependent on pricey shipped American liquified natural gas. But apparently the European establishment didn’t see the problem until Trump put the transatlantic relationship in less flattering terms.

“There is obviously no question that the European Union would let other nations of the world attack its sovereign borders, whoever they are,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told France Inter radio. Whoops, too late. Just look at Europe’s inflation and energy crisis driving voters to populism. “But have we entered into a period of time when it is survival of the fittest? Then my answer is yes,” he added.

Europe has long been working against any Darwinist instincts, spending the past several years trying to wedge its head inside the mouth of the lion while their own people yell at them to stop. Thanks to Trump’s world-class theatrics, we might all end up finally having a chance to take our countries back.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of independently produced talk shows in French and English. Her website can be found at http://www.rachelmarsden.com.) (C)2025 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

A whopping 65 percent of Americans say that they’re more worried about “corrupt government officials” than even loved ones getting seriously sick or dying or not being able to afford life, according to the 2024 edition of Chapman University’s Survey of American Fears.

And that figure hasn’t changed much from 2019, perennially topping the list. Even amid the nonstop Covid “disastertainment” of 2020/2021, the survey placed the fear of dodgy government leaders ahead of dying relatives by 20 percent. Maybe authorities tackling and apprehending joggers on empty beaches for “health” reasons has something to do with that lack of trust?

And people wonder why there’s such hysteria when seemingly benign drones suddenly appear in the sky in New Jersey, as was the case in December. Or why a non-negligible chunk of the population hunkers down in online silos that peddle alternative or creative theories to official narratives. Or why felony convictions have now become a selling point for a presidential candidate — or at least not making enough of a dent to cause a loss. There’s a sense that if the system hates you, then you must be a hero. And even more so if you vow to oppose it.

And lumped in with that establishment is also anything that it enables against the interests of the little guy. It would explain why even the recent brazen murder of a health care insurance company CEO in New York City, which appears to have been politically motivated by anger toward the system, is seen as more acceptable than not in a survey of voters under the age of 30 by Emerson College.

This lack of trust in the establishment is why, more than three decades after being imprisoned for murdering their own parents at their home near Los Angeles, Lyle and Erik Menendez are now enjoying a wave of popular support for their release, driven by a hit Netflix docufiction series highlighting alleged sexual abuse by their parents. There’s now renewed focus on the suggestion that the system swept it under the rug to land a dart on the board after an initial mistrial, as the district attorney sought to save face in the wake of OJ Simpson’s acquittal.

It’s why despite nonstop bombardment across the conventional and digital media landscapes of the Biden administration’s “whatever it takes” message in support of funneling more cash into the pockets of US weapons makers “for Ukraine” — most of Americans now oppose it, according to a CBS/YouGov poll published oar the end of November.

It’s why many Americans see Washington’s invisible hand everywhere, from Syria and Moscow to the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline explosion in the Baltic Sea.

Other fears on the list seem to support the top one of government corruption, since the government has done such a great job of tackling them that they’ve become permanent.

Cyberterrorism ranks right behind government corruption, with 58 of Americans worried about it. Sure, it sounds scary, but do most people even know what it means? If they do, it’s only because the government won’t shut up about it. Cyber has been the new focus for the military industrial complex for the past several years. So has terrorism, although that has been dying down. But hey, if you can jam both of those things together into a single term, then you’ve got a real taxpayer extortion tool. Please, take all my money if it means saving me from the ghosts in the machines!

Except that the government has been fear-mongering long enough about both cyber and terrorism that they really should have a strong grip on it by now. Instead, they’re starting to sound like the left does when they’re trying to drum up cash for their never-ending war on poverty. Or their war on women, which has apparently been resolved to the point that the fight for feminism has now morphed into a defense of men who wish to self-identify as women. Both cyber and terrorism problems should be well under control for the amount of tax cash invested. The two terms shouldn’t now be joining forces like Batman and Superman in a comic book movie crossover.

A similar argument can be made for other list-topping worries like Iran, Russia or North Korea using nuclear weapons. Whatever happened to all those sanctions that government said would keep Americans safe? Sanctions restrictions are meant “to accomplish foreign policy and national security goals,” according to the US Office of Foreign Assets Control administering them.

Doesn’t look like Americans feel any more safe as a result of those efforts. Perhaps they’re mostly just a way to tilt the global economic playing field by scaring the competition away from doing business, lest they face US sanctions for doing so, all while the Treasury Department issues exemptions for select American companies?

Climate change is still a concern for 48 percent of Americans surveyed. Guess that Biden administration increase in climate financing from $1.5 billion in 2021 to $5.8 billion the following year, and to $9.5 billion last year didn’t get the job done, huh?

Maybe that’s because it’s all a big scam, funding pet “climate justice” projects instead of the construction of a giant tarp for the planet to protect it from the main climate culprit: the sun. Maybe try taxing cow farts, like Denmark is planning to do starting in 2030?

The good news is that even horror movies can be viewed through a comedic lens. The “Scary Movie” film series is even based on the concept. So here’s another year of giggling through this giant demented clown show. If only because it sure beats the alternative.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of independently produced talk shows in French and English. Her website can be found at http://www.rachelmarsden.com. (C)2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

It seems like just yesterday that leaders across Western Europe and North America were advertising their openness to immigration from around the world as an integral part of their identity. Look how welcoming we are! Not like those nasty authoritarian regimes (which actually do take in a lot of migrants in some cases, just ones whose diversity contribution isn’t as superficial).

Nothing says democracy and freedom like the need to jack up internal security because your diversity experiment has spun out of control.

Almost overnight, welcome mats have suddenly been getting yanked all across the Western world over the past year in reaction to a rise in populist parties winning elections. Observers could be forgiven for trying to file claims for whiplash injury. But if there’s one thing that causes globalists to abandon their agenda it’s an imminent threat to their own political behinds.

Perhaps the most subtle case is in the United States, where the Biden administration is estimated to have quietly carried out about as many deportations as during Trump’s first presidential term, according to the Migration Policy Institute earlier this year.

Canada has imported so many global conflicts onto its own soil over the years that the spats have taken center stage in the country’s political life. From clashes between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian supporters outside a recent G20 meeting in Montreal to allegations of systemic political pandering to ethnic minority groups by various lawmakers being the focus of seemingly endless “foreign interference” hearings, and even an ongoing beef between the Indian government and the Sikh Khalistani separatist group playing out violently in the streets of Canada and in Ottawa’s halls of power.

Now, after cutting immigration targets and limiting temporary residency, Canada is also actively deterring asylum seekers with ads in 11 languages, including Ukrainian, Hindi, Urdu and Tamil, according to Reuters earlier this month.

No doubt the language choices are totally random. Unless you’re a bigot.

Surely this sudden onset of political schizophrenia couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Canada’s current housing crisis risks ejecting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s incumbent Liberals from power in next fall’s scheduled election in favor of the Conservatives.

In a desperate (and failed) attempt to fend off an election defeat, Britain’s Conservatives cut a deal with Rwanda to hold UK asylum seekers for processing. Others have been housed on a barge off the British coast.

Over in Europe, where populist gains in the European Union parliament and across the bloc have rattled the establishment, they’re so keen to ditch migrants that the bombing hadn’t even stopped in Syria amid the recent overthrow of President Bachar al-Assad before European countries were already packing Syrian migrants’ bags.

Or at least they can’t come here anymore, even if they may have ALREADY applied. Austria, France, Germany, Belgium and Greece announced a halt to processing any more asylum applications from Syrians. Because the very same al-Qaida jihadists that the EU still accuses on its own website of assassinations, forced religious conversions, hostage takings and suicide bombings, now self-identity as statesmen. And the leader talks like the only kind of war he’s into now is social justice, saying things like, “diversity is a strength,” according to Britain’s Telegraph.

And he dresses like he shares a stylist with the West’s girlfriend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. And apparently that’s good enough for European countries to at least give him the benefit of the doubt.

These Syrian terrorists’ reputational Botox hasn’t even finished settling in yet and already Austria is talking about deporting Syrian refugees back home.

And if the thought of heading back and taking a chance on a country being ruled by the same jihadist leader who still has a $10 million dollar bounty on his head in Washington for palling around with ISIS head-choppers isn’t enticing enough for Syrians, then maybe a cash bribe of EUR1,000 from the German government will do the trick, as some opposition politicians have suggested offering.

There’s the minor detail of the U.S. and Israel still bombing Syria, but no big deal, right? It would be just like walking into a movie theater while the clean-up crew is still knee deep in the mess from the previous showing.

Germany had already started drop-kicking Afghans out of social housing back in 2022 to make room for Ukrainians, according to Foreign Policy magazine.

And back in September, the BBC reported that German officials were also looking at Britain’s Rwanda deportation plan with goo-goo eyes. Meanwhile, the European Commission has recently started referring to the need to defend Europe against the “weaponization” of migration – implying that this wonderful source of multiculturalism could actually be some kind of threat.

It’s almost like the West is just a giant hotel now with suddenly no vacancy. Maybe if our genius leaders had availed themselves of the exit ramp that their own citizens have been screaming at them to take from the backseat for years, rather than accusing populists of spreading fake news about immigration, then they wouldn’t currently be facing such a brutal mugging by reality.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of independently produced talk shows in French and English. Her website can be found at http://www.rachelmarsden.com. (C)2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Trump, who has spent his entire business career in real estate, taking a wrecking ball to what doesn’t work and then building luxury in its place, staked his entire campaign message to American voters on the need to do the same with Washington. You’re not going to get renewal and reform from cabinet appointees who figure that the place looks good overall, but just maybe needs a little bit of paint. You need human bulldozers.

One of the few nominees that the establishment actually accepts proves the rule: Florida Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state. Even Democrats have said that despite their ideological differences, he’s a viable candidate for the job because he knows the ropes. Which is really just another way of saying that he’s on board with the bipartisan neocon talking points that don’t distinguish between Republican and Democrat positions much, if at all, underscoring the need for an anti-establishment force that’s skeptical of both establishment parties and whatever systemic corruption underpins some head-scratching consensus.

A tweet from October 2015 by Trump himself speaks volumes about why he may have chosen Rubio. “Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet,” Trump wrote, referring to the late top Republican donor and passionate Israel advocate, Sheldon Adelson, whose wife gave $100 million to Trump’s campaign late in the game, according to official disclosures as reported by the Times of Israel.

Not sure that anyone can actually make a puppet of Trump now that he’s cashed the check and doesn’t have to ever worry again about re- election, but Trump clearly doesn’t see Rubio as a leash-biter. Perhaps Trump also imagines him being a go-between who can translate Trump’s MAGA world view to all the swamp critters at the State Department.

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Same with Elise Stefanik, the New York congresswoman nominated to be Trump’s United Nations ambassador, who already seems to be working on her MAGA fluency after many years of speaking only neocon. “I’ve seen how important Ukraine is for the region,” she said in March 2022, according to WWNY-TV News. “They need to be admitted into NATO and we need to do everything we can by providing them munitions and javelins…”

Fast- forward to just a few days ago. Stefanik “fully supports President Trump’s peace through strength policy agenda and will follow his lead as Commander in Chief on best practices to end the war in Ukraine,” her spokesperson said.

“Best practices” for ending a war start with ceasefire agreements and negotiations,  which is the opposite of what official Washington is advocating, and what Americans voted for. But Stefanik already seems to understand what it’s going to take to keep the job.

Fox News host and veteran, Pete Hegseth, as secretary of Defense immediately triggered personal witch hunts related to everything from his tattoos to his personal life, with criticism suggesting that he doesn’t have the chops to lead one of the biggest bureaucracies in the country at the Pentagon. He had previously appeared on a podcast saying that he would purge the Pentagon of all the “woke sh*t,” which already puts him a step ahead of how the place is being run now. How much worse can the guy do, really? The Pentagon, when it wasn’t run by Hegseth, wargamed its chances against Russia and China, and lost. It’s also currently losing the war that it’s piloting in Ukraine against Russia. What exactly is the establishment worried that Hegseth would ruin, besides maybe the morale of a few paperclip Purple Hearts in the bureaucratic brigade?

The main concern about Trump’s director of National Intelligence pick, army reservist and former congresswoman, Tulsi Gabbard, would be that Russian President Vladimir Putin would be running the US intelligence community. All because she hasn’t swallowed the standard talking points and has been open to considering all sources and types of information and analysis. Which is actually the definition of intelligence gathering. Perhaps under Gabbard there would be more of that and less time setting fires in foreign countries as an excuse to rush in and put them out.

Attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz, seems to have spent much of his time as a congressman yelling about what he characterized as highly selective and ideologically-driven prosecutorial choices made by American justice officials. Much has been made of the fact that Gaetz hasn’t even practiced law, despite having a law degree. Pretty sure he doesn’t need one to recognize and end witch hunts dressed up as justice.

And last but not least: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services. The department is currently run by Dr. Rachel Levine, the first openly transgender official ever confirmed by the Senate. “Dr. Rachel Levine will bring the steady leadership and essential expertise we need to get people through this pandemic – no matter their ZIP code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability – and meet the public health needs of our country in this critical moment and beyond,” Biden said upon Levine’s appointment as deputy to current health secretary and lawyer, Xavier Becerra.

But the real diversity would be Kennedy, whose environmental law career involved prosecuting industrial polluters, and who would be the first Big Pharma and medical-industrial industry skeptic to hold the position at a time when the U.S. has become synonymous with pharmaceutical profiteering and obesity.

America’s problems won’t be solved by slight variations of the same sort of people who created them. Trump was elected as a giant middle finger to the system. This cabinet is just the rest of the hand, winding up for some long overdue spankings.

(Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of independently produced talk shows in French and English. Her website can be found at http://www.rachelmarsden.com.) (C)2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

First, the other guy was a disaster. The other guy happened to be a woman, don’t you know? In fact, we didn’t stop hearing about it, and about the opportunity to elect the first U.S. president in American history. Or the first woman of color, as an added bonus. Or someone from the working class. She’s one of you! You want someone just like you to be your president, right?

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Look, if she’s “one of us,” then why couldn’t she answer questions without taking a scenic detour and requiring a GPS map to find her way back to the actual point? No one sitting in a bar at Happy Hour on a Friday, kicking back with a few drinks, is talking with their pals like Harris talked to voters. Trump did.

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If she’s “one of us,” then why did she and her surrogates spend so much time trying to scare up votes on the abortion issue when surveys made it emphatically clear that the economy and immigration were the top priorities? Apparently they figured that women would care less about these things and more about reproductive rights – because they’re women. How sexist. How cynically anti-feminist to attempt to manipulate women into supporting the favored candidate of the patriarchal establishment by trying to scare up their support. The issue is ultimately one for the courts and states now, anyway. Whoops, it turns out that women, just being human beings, care more about jobs, security and making ends meet (and less about abortions) than the Democrats figured, with almost half of them (45 percent) voting for Trump, according to NBC News exit polling.

Trump talked exactly like the guy in the bar – and for hours and hours. Nothing could shut him up. Not even being shot at. Three- hour podcast chats. Long-winded improvisations at campaign rallies. Every word, joke, and action was parsed like it was the Gettysburg Address rather than riffing. While much of the media and establishment clutched its pearls, the voting public mostly appreciated the opportunity to repeatedly appraise and assess what fell out when Trump opened the kimono on his psyche.

While Harris and Biden camps discussed whether or not Trump supporters should be referred to as ” garbage”, Trump settled the matter by christening a garbage truck with his campaign logo and pulling on a reflective waste management worker vest. He took the same lighthearted approach when Harris talked about her job at McDonald’s in an obvious attempt to forge a connection with the average person. It’s a visual that’s hard to grasp when Harris has long been associated with the Washington political establishment. So Trump overwrote that fuzzy image with a glaring one of himself in a McDonald’s apron, working the drive-thru and making fries for customers in Feasterville, Pennsylvania.

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For Harris, McDonald’s and the cultural touchstone that it represented in our youth, from the birthday parties in the caboose to Big Mac first dates or the glowing “orange drink” on school sports days, was in her past and ours. For Trump, that greatness was still relevant. “When I’m president, the ice cream machines will work great again,” Trump wrote on social media, riffing on the much publicized inoperative state of McDonald’s soft serve dispensers. It’s a wonder that we didn’t hear for days afterwards about how he was lying and wouldn’t actually be able to do that. Voters realized that at least with Trump the next four years will have some entertainment value. Which brings me to the next point.

Trump could give and take a joke. Some might not like the jokes. So what? People are fed up with what has grown into systemic taste and thought policing, led by the regressive left that considers itself the ultimate arbiter of public discourse. Trump blows that shrinking window wide open. Case in point: Harris and her surrogates demanded that Latinos reject Trump in reaction to a joke about Puerto Rico by a professional comedian at his Madison Square Garden rally. Instead, they flocked to him in record numbers, with 46 percent of the vote, proving that they can handle any attempts at humor and don’t need to be infantilized.

And while Harris barreled down her campaign talking point superhighway, Trump didn’t consider any side street too minor for a detour. When a story emerged on social media about disturbing government overreach of a pet squirrel and raccoon being taken and euthanized by authorities in New York state from a family of influencers, it wasn’t beneath Trump’s attention. “I know Don’s fired up about Peanut the squirrel,” said Trump’s running mate JD Vance, referring to it as an example of government overreach.

Harris’ heavy handedness on foreign policy issues contrasted drastically with Trump’s lighter touch in suggesting that he’d just seek to open dialogue given his general distaste for war. People are fed up with the establishment’s fear-mongering in service of its self-enriching war racket.

While college campuses reportedly canceled some classes and even imported therapy animals – like dogs and ducks – to treat the shock of well-formatted minds attempting to come to grips with the reality that democracy has shown their little echo chamber to be much smaller than they figured, the silent majority had just proven that for all the establishment’s attempts at diversity, Trump-style populist thought that challenges the establishment status quo is drastically underrepresented and marginalized.

Until they address this systemic discrimination, they’ll continue to suffer from cognitive dissonance whenever the average person has the opportunity to speak through the ballot box.

(Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of independently produced talk shows in French and English. Her website can be found at http://www.rachelmarsden.com.) (C)2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

“I’m standing with Ukraine” or “I’m standing with Israel,” say our fearless leaders while sitting around making virtue- signaling posts on social media. Never has kicking off a global ruck been so low-effort.

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It makes you wonder how lucid they even are. Eastern European officials have spoken in the wings of global summits about how their fellow NATO country counterparts show up talking like a bunch of fraternity bros all drinking from the same spiked punch bowl, ready to go throw some punches.

In an interview last month with The Times of London before leaving office on Oct. 1, Jens Stoltenberg, the outgoing secretary general for the Western weapons lobby, NATO, shrugged off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s red line on Western countries authorizing Kyiv to use Western military hardware for strikes deep inside Russia. Moscow has even revised its nuclear deterrence doctrine to explicitly consider nuclear states (like the US) that use non-nuclear ones (like Ukraine) to hit Russia as participants in a joint attack.

Stoltenberg just blew it off, saying that Putin’s red lines had been crossed before and nothing happened. Really? You mean, except for the entire conflict in Ukraine, after NATO had cozied up to the Russian border in violation of that Putin red line? Guess he forgot about that one.

Our fearless leaders’ Ukraine rhetoric has also been re-purposed for Israel. Iran’s attack was “unprovoked,” they say. Like, Israel was just sitting around and minding its own business when suddenly Iran, out of nowhere, punched it in the face with a hail of ballistic missiles last week. Forget about Israel’s exploding Hezbollah pagers operation, the murder of Iranian-linked Hezbollah military commanders, and the ground invasion of Lebanon – which the West seems reluctant to qualify as such, even though they were quick to denounce Russia’s “special military operation” as one.

Then there are the citizens of Gaza and, more recently, Lebanon, who partly rely on Iran for protection, being told by Israel, “heads up, here come the bombs,” like they’re strolling through the local park during a touch football game.

Yes, Israel has a right to defend itself. So does Syria, which they’re bombing. And Lebanon. And Gaza. And Iran. Have I missed any? Oh yeah, they just hit a Russian military base in Syria, too. What could possibly go wrong in kicking in the door of the bear’s cave in this conflict, too?

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The US is already in the region, trying to shoot down some of the massive amounts of Iranian missiles that ripped through Israel’s Iron Dome firecracker-stopper, and blowing a year’s supply of US interceptor missiles in just one stint. So, now what? How easy will it be for Washington to stand with Israel when it runs out of ammo? Don’t bother asking Europe for any, either, since it’s a well-known fact that they don’t have any. And what they do get is mostly from US weapons manufacturers, as a recent report on the European Union’s lack of competitiveness, authored by former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, pointed out. Meaning the EU can’t even do the military industrial complex racket right.

So what would our valiant “standers” do if Russia decided to react to Israel attacking its military base in Syria? Is the West relying on Putin’s good will? Because that would seem to be the exact opposite of what they keep saying about him – that he acts “unprovoked.” Pick a lane.

Russia has spent the past couple of years massively ramping up its defense production to the point of comprising 7.5 percent of its GDP and “worrying Europe’s war planners,” according to The Guardian.

Likewise, in July, Iran’s defense minister announced that its weapons exports had tripled in less than three years as a result of increased production.

Meanwhile, “China is ready for war. And thanks to a crumbling defense industrial base, America is not,” headlined Foreign Affairs magazine this month.

Our valiant “standers” know that they can’t out shoot these three players in a conventional war if they all came in on the same side in support of Iran. Still, they can’t help shooting off their mouths.here’s also been talk of Israel just hitting Iranian oil infrastructure, as though that would be a splendid idea. You clowns do know that major risks and Iran’s OPEC pals, Russia, dictate oil prices, right?

Israel is fighting all the kids in the schoolyard and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is yanking on the shirttails of Western leaders, demanding solidarity, and support in “liberating” the Middle East. Sure, because that’s always worked out well, like in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. How about telling him to go away and work it out? A firm shove in that direction seems best for humanity. That’s what former President Ronald Reagan did in 1984, asking why the US was still even mixed up in the region’s affairs, and bailing out of Lebanon.

Even Ukrainian officials have been wondering why the attention has turned so quickly from them to Israel. The answer is simple. It’s because Washington’s elites have far more interests in Israel, and more influential Israeli lobbies in the US that directly impact their own political backsides. The average citizen is just along for the white-knuckle ride, relegated to yelling from the backseat.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of independently produced talk shows in French and English. Her website can be found at http://www.rachelmarsden.com. marsden(C)2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

After an initial mistrial, the Menendez brothers were retried and convicted of first- degree murder, sent to prison in 1996 for two consecutive life sentences without parole, and effectively memory-holed. Until now.

A new- nine part Netflix series, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” is introducing a new generation to the case. The same generation that has grown up in the long shadow of the “#MeToo” movement, popularized on social media, which has encouraged victims to speak out about abusive behavior, particularly of a sexual nature, that was previously tolerated, downplayed or outright dismissed. From the U.S. to here in France, this newfound awareness has led to job dismissals, criminal trials and convictions of powerful individuals, arguably the most prominent being former Hollywood mogul, Harvey Weinstein, convicted in California last year of rape and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

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The Netflix show uses the Rashomon effect to tell the story from the perspective of each of the people involved, based on available court and other materials. It focuses on the abuse that the brothers claimed to have suffered at the hands of their father — Hollywood RCA executive, Jose Menendez, known for working with the boy band, Menudo — and their mother, whom the brothers considered complicit.

The abuse evidence was compelling enough to deadlock an initial jury. In the second trial, the judge excluded it entirely.

Jose Menendez in today’s world would have been considered a #MeToo villain straight out of Central Casting. Beyond the multitude of relatives who testified to sexual and other abuse in the initial trial, details emerged last year in court filings by a onetime Menudo member alleging that as a young teen he was drugged and raped in hotels twice by Jose Menendez.

A letter written by Erik Menendez to his cousin was also recently discovered in a storage locker by the brothers’ aunt. Dated months before the murders, it reads, “I’ve been trying to avoid dad. It’s still happening Andy, but it’s worse for me now. … I never know when it’s going to happen and it’s driving me crazy. Every night, I stay up thinking he might come in. I need to put it out of my mind.”

Should this new evidence lead to the exoneration of two men who have been imprisoned for 34 years? Self- defense in response to abuse generally means a manslaughter conviction. But the brothers had options other than just offing their parents while they chilled on the couch at home. The courts have been clear that any threat of abuse has to be imminent. Still, there has been a shift in how society feels about abuse, and an increasing reluctance to relegate it to a mere epiphenomenon.

Frankly, all of this is almost beside the point when Lyle and Erik have been locked away for more than three decades, which is longer than the maximum sentencing guidelines of the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity like extermination, systemic torture, mass enslavement and apartheid. The maximum penalty for these crimes “may not exceed a maximum of 30 years,” according to international law, except when “justified by the extreme gravity of the crime and the individual circumstances of the convicted person.”

We’re talking here about genocide.

The U.S. isn’t actually signatory to the Rome Statute, mostly to avoid the prosecution of its own military and officials under it, but the human rights principles it defines are no less valid. So why don’t they apply to these men?

Just north of the U.S. border, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that any more than 25 years in prison without the possibility of parole, for any number of consecutive life sentences, is both cruel and unconstitutional. According to the high court, zero possibility of having any life or any incentive to reform and reintegrate is comparable to death — “since only death will end their incarceration.”

Is Canada really any more dangerous a place than the U.S. because it’s most serious criminals get a chance to prove themselves after 25 years? Hardly. No one’s like, “Oh, 25 years in jail makes it totally worth killing someone.”

The Menendez brothers are reportedly model prisoners at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego, working on various projects and counseling other inmates, with Lyle having just graduated from a UC Irvine prison program with a bachelor of arts in sociology.

This shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Former President Donald Trump championed and signed significant bipartisan federal prison and sentencing reforms in an effort to favor reintegration over mass incarcerations in a country that sets the world record for life sentences.

California Governor Gavin Newsom can grant pardons or commute sentences for state crimes. He really needs to in this case, in acknowledgment of international human rights laws on sentencing, with the current social climate on abuse as a mitigating factor. If he can spark a long overdue debate on state-level justice reform in doing so, then all the better.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of independently produced talk shows in French and English. Her website can be found at http://www.rachelmarsden.com. (C)2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Law enforcement isn’t it, if only because a foreign leader can actually just stand in front of Congress and beg or demand that American politicians follow the marching orders of their foreign interests at U.S. taxpayers’ expense, and it’s totally cool, even cheered. One can also officially register in a U.S. government foreign agent or lobbyist database and proceed to attempt to twist the arms of everyone in Washington, and that’s just fine. What’s not OK is to do things on the down-low.

The bottom line is that it’s virtually impossible for government to protect citizens from all forms of foreign influence when all it takes is proper registration to legitimize the activity to the point where elected representatives start openly doing foreign bidding. America is a superpower with economic and political influence around the world. Part of that is structural and built into the global financial system, for example. But military operations, up to and including regime change, also represent heavy-handed foreign and global influence. So it would be naive to think that any foreign government wouldn’t want to actively work to ensure the best possible position for itself and its own people vis-a-vis this reality, given the impact of every American policy move around the world.

But stuck in the middle of all this are the average citizens, bombarded by noise from all sides and sources. The feds not only can’t protect them, but there’s a valid argument to be made that even the announcement effect in the selective prosecution of any perceived influence efforts can also serve to tilt the playing field. For example, if the alleged perpetrators favored a certain ideology, then it risks harming the legitimacy of that ideology altogether, sidelining it from the domestic battlefield of ideas through mere potential association and effectively awarding undue and unearned free rein to its opponents.

It’s hard to think of something more dangerous for democracy and stability than for a particular set of values to ultimately end up being conflated with foreign interference, leaving opposing ideas as the only “valid” ones. Because what happens if reality hits and those marginalized views end up most closely matching objective reality? “United wishes and good will cannot overcome brute facts,” wrote former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. “Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it. Ignorance may deride it. Malice may distort it. But there it is.”

Recent electoral gains in Europe, by the anti-establishment left and right, strongly suggest an erosion of trust in the same establishment that has routinely gone out of its way to suppress unfavorable narratives in the public square, to the point that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg recently admitted in a letter to a congressional committee that he regrets bowing to Biden administration pressure to censor content on Facebook and Instagram related to everything from Covid-19 to the debate around Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Citizens who were denied access to a full and unfettered debate of contradictory ideas are now left with two choices: being angry with the censors or clinging to a position to avoid any adverse effects of cognitive dissonance.

So what’s the solution to protect the average citizen? More of what they’ve been trying to suppress: contradictory debate. A new annual report on college campus free speech by the US-based nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) finds that American schools are effectively cultivating a lack of critical thought – the kind that could serve as a firewall for any manipulative nonsense – both foreign or domestic. Harvard, Columbia, and NYU – classic establishment elite feeder schools – rank the worst for free speech – while the top grades go to University of Virginia, Michigan Tech and Florida State.

Every year, this report demonstrates the dismal state of free speech at institutions that are supposed to represent the epicenter of debate, with a whopping 69 percent of students now considering it acceptable to just shout down a speaker (up 6 percent from last year), and 52 percent feeling that they can just block others from attending a campus talk they may not like themselves. The end result? The voting base ends up getting treated like a bunch of dim bulbs who can’t figure things out for themselves and need constant nanny-state protection that just happens to serve as conveniently selective censorship.

The best firewall for American democracy is ultimately for the average person to be capable of openly considering every idea – regardless of source – and assessing whether it’s rubbish based on a specific set of tools and skills that they and their chosen pronouns are not currently getting in their educational safe spaces.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of independently produced talk shows in French and English. Her website can be found at http://www.rachelmarsden.com. (C)2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

“Canadians understand that diversity is our strength. We know that Canada has succeeded – culturally, politically, economically – because of our diversity, not in spite of it,” said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a speech shortly after his election. Fast- forward almost a decade and all that diversity is on the verge of uniting to turf him out of office, if current Angus Reid polling noting his nearly 70 percent disapproval rating is any indication.

After former US President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, one of his first moves was an executive order to enact a travel ban from Muslim-majority nations and later ended protections for temporary residents from others.

Always quick off the mark to beam a virtue signal around the world at the first opportunity, like some kind of woke Batman, Trudeau reacted with a Tweet. “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength,” he wrote. And in 2019, Trudeau apparently couldn’t help it when he found himself on the world stage alongside NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and was asked about Trump’s immigration posture. “The diversity of our country is actually one of our greatest strengths and a source of tremendous resilience and pride for Canadians and we will continue to defend that,” Trudeau said.

What made much less noise was the fact that Canadian government desk jockeys and ministers were busy dealing with the mop-up from Trudeau’s rhetorical dysentery, having to explain to foreign governments and to the immigration consultants in the U.S. helping asylum seekers cross into Canada, that the country isn’t really the flop house that its prime minister had suggested through his clarion calls.

When Covid mandates forced many businesses online and others to close or halt activity, Trump suspended entry to foreigners with work visas under the pretext of trying to figure out what to do with all the unemployed Americans first.

Trudeau, by contrast, rolled up his sleeves and mucked about with the Canadian economy, offering cash handouts so generous that many students and low-wage workers decided that it was more lucrative to take the free cash and quit their job. Meanwhile, Canadian immigration skyrocketed from 2021 to 2023 to levels not seen since at least as far back as 2000, according to government data.

Now, no one is happy — not even the supposed beneficiaries of Canada’s openness who struggle to find work at a newcomer unemployment rate of nearly 12 percent (double the national average).

They can’t secure available and affordable housing given their relatively low wages and tight market, particularly amid an ongoing inflation and cost of living crisis. Trudeau’s knee-jerk solution to that was to promise that the government would build 3.87 million homes by 2031. According to the usual leftist magic math, that would be about 1,096 houses per minute.

In the meantime, everyone in the country is stuck in the same sinking boat, and they’re angry at its captain. Which would explain why he has now decided that it’s time to chart a different course in an attempt to undo the damage for which he and his leftist policies are solely responsible.

So Trudeau has just announced a reduction in the overall number of temporary foreign workers, for whom his team helped to create a fake need by paying teenagers and workers already in Canada to stay home and hide from Covid. Employers in areas where the unemployment rate is above the national average won’t be able to use temporary foreign labor, starting later this month. And Team Trudeau has placed a limit on how many low-pay foreign hires can work at any given company, capping the number at 10 percent of the workforce. About the only ones who will be upset by all this are the influential establishment interests that routinely manipulate government policy to benefit from corporate welfare handouts and maximized shareholder dividends.

None of this should ever have happened in the first place. Canada used to be a model that every other Western country cited as the gold standard for merit-based immigration. The points system had long favored educated, skilled workers, fluent in either official language of English or French, whose contributions had to match the economic needs and interests of the country. What has proliferated instead under Trudeau is a shortsighted, shallow, leftist worldview in which diversity, egged on by influential profiteers, is defined as him being able to look out across the national landscape and see as many colors as possible all choosing their own pronouns.

It’s only now that his policies have become a direct threat to his enabling establishment cronies, with his own party that champions their interests now at risk of being drop-kicked from office if things don’t change, that he’s changed his tune. Here’s hoping that Trump, who has recently riffed on the need for more foreign workers in certain sectors, to the obvious benefit of his tech bro backers, doesn’t end up endorsing this failed trend on which his instincts were initially spot-on.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of independently produced talk shows in French and English. Her website can be found at http://www.rachelmarsden.com. (C)2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Back when I was involved in running North American political campaigns, one of the most basic rules was that you developed a point-by-point platform, then you spent days on end hammering on a mere few of those points over and over again, in various ways, as a means of conveying to the electorate the contrast between your policies and those of your opponent. It’s called message discipline. Grassroots supporters would discuss, debate, and compare the issues with those of the other team. By Election Day, after months of ad nauseam campaigning, no one said, “Guess I’d better go read their platforms now to figure out what’s going on.”

Here’s a fun exercise. Go up to a random person – friend or stranger – and ask them which candidate they prefer and which of their platform points they like. Chances are that they either blurt out in frustration that they don’t care about trivial details like “policy” – or that they’re simply voting against the other candidate and riff on what a clown they are and, by extension, you. Or they’ll bring up some points they’ve heard, but that aren’t actually part of the platform.

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Elections have largely become about comforting one’s feelings or belonging to a team. Ever try to interrupt a red-faced rant by someone who was triggered by either a criticism of “their” political team/candidate, or by a defense of the other side? Think they’re really interested in rational debate? Hardly anyone is anymore. At least not those who are making the most noise, including the candidates themselves. No one can hear anything of substance through all the noise.

If an alien suddenly landed on Earth right now, here’s what they would think were the critical issues for the future of America:

Whose crowds are bigger? Who has more celebrities on board? Is Trump working too hard, or not hard enough? Does he have trauma from almost being shot? What’s with Trump’s vice president candidate JD Vance’s obsession with single “cat ladies”, and does he wear eyeliner? Why does Kamala laugh so much?

Granted, it’s hard for the average voter to get a grasp of the issues from the candidates themselves when both have proven to be incoherent.

Trump, for instance, has railed against the “migrant invasion”, with a platform that promises to “seal the border” and “carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.”

He would also “stop outsourcing, and turn the United States into a manufacturing superpower.” Yet he said earlier this month that he was “going to let a lot of people come in, because we need more people, especially with AI coming. … And the farmers need, everybody needs, but we’re going to make sure they’re not murderers and drug dealers.”

Wow, what a high bar!

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Upping migration for cheap labor that drives down wages is basically the same thing as outsourcing to the developing world. In both cases, the tech bros donating massively to Trump’s campaign through political action committees just happen to be the main benefactors of the cheaper foreign labor. Incidentally, rapidly developing artificial intelligence actually reduces that need – think the elimination of cashiers in favor of self-checkouts – so Trump would have been better off making an argument that actually aligned with his platform rather than contradicting it.

Harris, meanwhile, has promised to secure the border – which is like someone with multiple divorces preaching about marriage. She was appointed by President Joe Biden, in a March 2021 press conference, to lead the administration’s efforts in “stemming the migration to our southern border.”

Migrant encounters at the border have since risen drastically according to US Customs and Border Protection data, hitting a record high at the end of 2023.

So, clearly, Harris’ mission to get other countries to curtail migrants – in the same way that the European Union has made deals with Tunisia, Morocco and Turkey to do the same – hasn’t done very well. You’d never know that from listening to her, though.

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The candidates themselves are drowning so badly in the muddied waters of their own campaigns that mainstream media reporting, which historically tends to lean overwhelmingly left, has taken the liberty of helping them out with framing. Or rather, helping out one side, in particular. “Kamala Harris unveils populist policy agenda, with $6,000 credit for newborns,” headlined the Washington Post, in apparently spelling “socialist” wrong. Because that’s exactly what one would call government handing out taxpayer-funded subsidies for every aspect of life from childbirth to home buying – if one were objective.

Neither of these two candidates can shut up about democracy, which is only possible with an informed electorate. Both are doing it a disservice by burying it – and their platforms – under a giant clown show with endless rhetorical balloon animals.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of independently produced talk shows in French and English. Her website can be found at http://www.rachelmarsden.com.

(C)2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC