RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/trump-trudeau-tariffs-border-fight-canada

The problem with criticizing Justin Trudeau is not where to begin but where to end. Trudeau’s proclivity for gaffes and vulgarity was established long before he became prime minister. And this fluffy, insubstantial side even seemed like it might have an upside as he formed a government: as long as Trudeau focused on annoying stunts and virtue-signaling, he would have little time for screwing up the country. Sadly, however, his government’s long procession of scandals and missteps has proven that theory wrong.

Trudeau’s latest crisis is arguably the worst. The incoming Trump administration has threatened a 25 percent tariff on Canadian goods entering the U.S. unless Canada stops the flow of drugs and migrants over the border. The trade relationship between Canada and the United States is the largest between any two countries in the world. The total value of cross border trade was $926 billion in 2023, or roughly $2.5 billion a day. This reality should make any problem with border security a high priority for Canada; and any threat of tariffs is a national emergency.

How did Trudeau react? First, he had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, which seems to have produced no result. Next, at the Equal Voice Gala for International Human Rights Day, Trudeau delivered a speech attacking the United States for failing to elect Kamala Harris and declaring himself a “proud feminist.” Then he executed a series of ham-fisted moves to reassign his minister of finance, Chrystia Freeland, and replace her with Mark Carney, former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. Freeland refused this demotion and tendered her resignation.

That all happened on the same morning that Freeland was to present a budgetary update known as the Fall Economic Statement, which was already weeks overdue. Whatever disagreement unfolded behind closed doors between Trudeau and Freeland likely concerned increased borrowing and spending on two cynical vote-buying schemes: a two-month holiday from the Goods and Services Tax, and a $250 rebate to families making less than $150,000 a year. What purpose is served by shoe-horning Carney into the government is not clear. But the latest episode seems to repeat an old pattern familiar from the SNC Lavalin scandal, in which Trudeau bullied and expelled his own female (and indigenous) attorney general from his cabinet for resisting pressure to cut a deal for a politically connected corporation facing corruption charges. In the event, the “feminist” Trudeau sacked the woman and replaced her with a more obedient male.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-not-to-think-about-syria/

The rapid demise of the brutal Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria has taken every geopolitical analyst and self-proclaimed Middle East “expert” by storm. Following 53 years of brutal Assad family rule and 13 years of bloody civil war, the Syrian strongman abruptly fled for asylum in Moscow as rebels finalized their encircling of Damascus. In the blink of an eye, one of the two Ba’athist Arab states — along with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq before the U.S.-led 2003 invasion — was no more.

Start with the obvious: Assad was a world-historical tyrant, even by bleak Arab world standards. He led with an iron fist, incarcerating political enemies and siccing his totalitarian security apparatuses on all those whom he deemed a threat. (You can see where Democrats may have gotten some ideas.) Since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, he racked up a death toll of over half a million — the majority civilian noncombatants. He has used chemical weapons against his own people on multiple occasions. He allied with the very worst actors on the world stage, and by the time he fled, his regime had become a satrapy held in joint custody by two rogue states: Russia and Iran.

There are thus many reasons to be ecstatic that Assad, a minority Alawite in a majority-Sunni country, is no more. From a Western geopolitical perspective, it is a clear positive that Russia has lost easy access to Mediterranean ports, and Iran has a gaping hole in its “Shiite crescent” of influence, which, in the not-so-distant past, extended from Iran through Iraq and Syria into Hezbollah-overrun Lebanon. And from a humanitarian perspective, one of the very worst butchers in recent global history has been deposed.

The problem, as is so often the case, is the thorny question of what comes next. And therein lies the rub.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/do-irans-leaders-smell-the-coffee-yet/

You can say a lot of things, most of them unpleasant, about former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. But you can’t say he didn’t have a nose for coffee.

He knew what was coming once the Syrian rebel fighters took Aleppo, more than 200 miles to the north.

He flew to Moscow the next day, on November 28, begging for Russian military support, but was given the cold shoulder. By the time the Iranian foreign minister visited him in Damascus on December 2, the rebels were moving south toward Hama and Assad knew it was only a matter of time — and not much of it — before they reached Damascus. Assad was so despondent he didn’t even ask the Iranians for help.

We now know that he secretly flew to Moscow in the wee hours of Sunday morning, December 8, after telling his top generals that help was on the way from Russia. He wasn’t going to get Qaddafied by his own people.

Now the question is, will Iran be next?

The regime’s Supreme Leader has undoubtedly already made his escape plans. Some of my Iranian sources believe he’s got a jet gassed and ready, but that could just be wishful thinking on their part.

What’s sure is this: all those surrounding Khamenei and his generals have been wearing adult diapers for the past week. They are terrified that they could be next.