A commentary by the leader of the People's Party of Canada and MP for the Quebec riding of Beauce.

This is the second in a series of commentaries about climate change from Canada's main political parties; they are being published daily this week.

Justin Trudeau's Liberal government has spent billions of dollars at home and abroad to fight global warming — or "climate change" as it is now called, to account for every natural weather event and its opposite.

To lower greenhouse gas emissions, the government has imposed a carbon tax, other taxes and countless regulations. It subsidizes inefficient and costly "green technology," and it is blocking the development of oil resources crucial to our prosperity.

The headline leapt off the page of Makor Rishon, one of the right-wing Israeli dailies owned by Sheldon Adelson. Israel's public security minister, Gilad Erdan, boasted: "Freedom of worship on the Temple Mount? It can happen in the next few years, a decade at most."

He added: "Everyone must consider what he can do in the context of [Israeli] responsibility and authority to achieve sovereignty over our people's holiest site, our holy Mount. This is what I myself do and promise to do even more in future."

The explicit meaning of such statements is clear to all Israelis: Erdan plans to topple the decades-old compact between Israel and the Jordanian Jerusalem Awqaf, according to which the Awqaf exercised exclusive authority over Al-Aqsa Mosque, to offer the most extreme Israeli settlers, who seek to rebuild the Temple, total and free access to Al-Aqsa.

Full access

Given that it is the third holiest site in Islam, and that the Jordanian government is its guardian, offering full access to settlers will cause an immediate rupture within the Muslim world. It will threaten to resume the deadly riots which brought tens of thousands of Palestinians to Al-Aqsa when in July 2017 Israel installed intrusive surveillance equipment at the compound entrances.

In the midst of a trade war with the United States and falling domestic demand, China registered a 6% GDP increase in the third quarter of the year compared to the same period of 2018.

That is the smallest number since Beijing began compiling the data in 1993, the Associated Press reports.

Quarterly economic growth was announced by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Friday. According to the Beijing agency, the number was lower than expected by analysts (6.1%) and the annual economic growth of 2019, compared to 2018, is at 6.2%.

No wonder Democratic Party bosses and mainstream media are trying to bury presidential contender Tulsi Gabbard. She is the only candidate, perhaps the only politician in the US, who is telling the American public exactly what they need to know about what their government and military are really up to: fighting illegal regime-change wars, and to boot, sponsoring terrorists for that purpose.

It didn't come much clearer nor more explicit than when Gabbard fired up the Democratic TV debate this week. It was billed as the biggest televised presidential debate ever, and the Hawaii Representative told some prime-time home-truths to the nation:

"Donald Trump has blood of the Kurds on his hands, but so do many of the politicians in our country from both parties who have supported this ongoing regime-change war in Syria that started in 2011... along with many in the mainstream media who have been championing and cheer-leading this regime-change war."

US President Donald Trump hailed the news that Turkey agreed to halt its operation in Syria pending the withdrawal of Kurdish militia from the 'safe zone' along the border, crediting his "tough love" approach for the breakthrough.

"This deal could NEVER have been made 3 days ago. There needed to be some 'tough' love in order to get it done," Trump tweeted on Thursday, adding he was "proud of all" involved.

Moments earlier, Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that Ankara had agreed to a 120-hour ceasefire, and to stop its 'Operation Peace Spring' entirely if the US-allied Kurdish militias completed their withdrawal beyond a 20-kilometer "safe zone" along the Turkey-Syria border.

Trump's "tough love" most likely referred to sanctions against individual Turkish officials involved in the operation and steep tariffs on Turkish steel, which he threatened Ankara with after the incursion began last week.

A top U.S. diplomat and expert on Ukraine testified to Congress yesterday that the Obama administration — with former Vice President Joe Biden as its point man — orchestrated the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating a company connected to the Biden family, sources familiar with the testimony told The Federalist.

The testimony of George Kent, a State Department official who works on the agency's Ukraine portfolio, directly contradicts claims that the Obama administration was merely following the lead of the so-called international community in demanding the firing of Viktor Shokin, a controversial Ukrainian prosecutor who was reportedly investigating Burisma, a global energy company long suspected of corruption and money laundering. In 2014, Burisma paid Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son, tens of thousands of dollars to sit on its board despite the younger Biden's complete lack of expertise or professional experience running a multi-national oil and gas concern.

Kent told lawmakers on Tuesday that the Obama administration spearheaded the efforts to have Shokin removed from his position as the top federal prosecutor in Ukraine. Kent said the international community — namely the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Western nations within the European Union — were deferential to U.S. directives on the matter. At a 2018 event organized by the Council on Foreign Relations, Joe Biden — who was tasked by then-President Barack Obama to lead the U.S. government's efforts in Ukraine — bragged about threatening to withhold a billion-dollar loan guarantee if the Ukrainian government refused to fire Shokin.

Jeremy Corbyn has been roundly criticized by his political opponents for rejecting Boris Johnson's Brexit deal with the EU out of hand without reading it.

Corbyn was quoted by the PA news service at 10:51am local time Thursday, rejecting what he called a "sell-out deal" despite the fact the full legal text of the agreement was only emailed out by 10 Downing Street at 11:17am.
The Labour leader confirmed he will support a referendum on the deal before it comes into effect, which could further delay the process which has dragged on for three years, much to the frustration of 'Leave' voters and EU negotiators.

It was special investigator John Durham who acquired two BlackBerrys used by Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese professor who jumped-started the FBI's long Russia probe into President Trump's campaign.

Attorney General William P. Barr assigned Mr. Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, the mission of finding out the origins of the FBI's counter-intelligence investigation known as Crossfire Hurricane.

Sidney Powell, attorney for retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, filed a court motion on Monday disclosing the phones' existence while tying them to Western intelligence. She told The Washington Times on Thursday that she has confirmed that it was Mr. Durham's office who obtained them. She told The Times that a "source," whom she declined to identify, told her about the BlackBerrys.

Ms. Powell has added to the Mifsud intrigue with her motion before District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan asking him to order the government to turn over the BlackBerrys' data. The filing lists the two phones' model number, PIN and SIM card information.

Retired Admiral William McRaven has published an op-ed in Friday's New York Times titled, "Our Republic Is Under Attack From the President," urging that Trump be removed from office — "the sooner, the better."

McRaven's op-ed gives a military imprimatur to what President Donald Trump has already likened to a "coup," as Democrats attempt to impeach him with barely a year to go before the next presidential election.


The admiral, well-respected for his role in overseeing the operation to kill Al Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden in 2011, argues that senior military leaders have lost confidence in the president and feel he is a threat to the nation.

President Donald Trump has given the orders to begin a "deliberate withdrawal" of his troops and end the occupation of north-east Syria (NES). This is accelerating the race between the Turkish and the Syrian forces to control NES.

Turkey is in a rush to establish its 30-35km wide safe zone on the borders with Syria in the US-occupied north-east territory, currently under the control of the Syrian Kurdish separatists. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is aware of the pressure his US ally, President Donald Trump is under for approving this operation, an operation which has made Trump even more unpopular among the US and western élites.

Trump took it upon himself to unilaterally take control of an area in Syria bigger than Switzerland. Uninvited by the central government, he had established over a dozen military and air bases in the country and kept them there notwithstanding the defeat of ISIS. Trump has now agreed to pull back some US troops, allowing Turkey and its Syrian proxies to move into this part of Syrian territory. The US President and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin blocked an EU-drafted resolution condemning the Turkish offensive. Now, the winners in this operation are much more numerous than the losers and it would be a mistake to suppose that only Turkey is gaining from this operation. All winners have their own objectives and perspectives to assess how they can benefit from the Turkish invasion.

By deciding to pull out 1,000 men from NES, Trump is reshuffling the cards, moving the burden away from his administration and dropping it into the hands of Russia, Turkey and Syria (and their allies). There is a serious need for Russia to move fast and bring concerned players around the table to organise a situation that could turn more chaotic and lead to even more confrontation.

The biggest losers are the Kurds: the People's Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) - which were classified as terrorist organisations by the US (since 1997), by the European Union (since 2002), and by NATO, Turkey, and some other countries.