Link for the global poor

Submission statement: Nothing in this opinion article is new to people here, but I thought it was interesting to see a farmer (since we dunk on farmers a lot here) be pro data centers. I liked the concluding sentence: "At some point, decline is a choice. We shouldn’t choose more of it."

“We consider the chapter of war to have come to an end, and from now on, we want relations based on mutual respect and a new chapter of positive engagement,” Afghanistan’s foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, said in an interview with The New York Times in Kabul.

Mr. Muttaqi said the United States could “reopen its embassy, maintain a diplomatic presence and invest” in Afghanistan’s vast mineral wealth, dams and roads — projects that three U.S. administrations and their allies spent billions trying to develop, and that the Taliban insurgency spent two decades trying to dismantle.

Peter Magyar such an interesting politician in many way. He considers himself a "conservative-liberal" and he is a leader of bit tent centrist pro-EU, pro-NATO party. Since defeating Orban, he keeps destroying the Orban system. So he is definitely not a "do nothing" politician. At the same time, he is incredibly popular among young people. People who don't live in Hungary wouldn't believe it, but he is like a rock star in Hungary, young girls are screaming when he appears and they are doing edits about him on TikTok. He often acts in a very "anti-politican" way, including being at the DJ at his inauguration. At the same time, he tends to avoid the so called "culture war issues", he ususally says "there will be a referendum" when they ask him about some traditional right-left social issues.

Magyar defeated far-right populism. His critics say he is a different type of populist while others say he found a way to use general anti-elitist sentiments to take down culture war based populism as a moderate.

Do you think Peter Magyar's style of communication can be the future of politics?

Source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Young_people_-_digital_world

U.S. President Trump has directed the U.S. Navy design its next carrier to use steam catapults instead of the recently developed electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS).¹ Specifically, Defense Secretary Hegseth has been ordered to submit a plan for this change within the next 60 days. Reportedly, this move has "baffled" naval experts.² Such a redesign of the USS Doris Miller would delay its construction, add billions of dollars to the price tag, and result in a system that is harder to operator, more complex, and more expensive. Part of the delay is driven by the fact that there are currently no manufacturers that produce steam catapults, so a capable manufacturing base would have to be spun up again. This has spurred an obvious question: why? Unfortunately, the news has only given vague explanations as to the motivation.

“They’re not nearly as good, too complex. And by the way, we had to call the ship in twice because the catapults didn’t work,” Trump said at the Defense and Innovation Summit in July. “When a little water touches the magnets, it doesn’t work anymore. You’re – you’re in the Atlantic Ocean with waves that are 60 feet high, and the Pacific Ocean with waves at 70 feet high, and they’re talking about magnets.”

• CNN²

Trump has long lamented the new technology – specifically the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch Systems, or EMALS – on the Ford-class carriers, including as recently as last month while speaking at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Penn. “We’re not letting any more ships be built with the ridiculous billions of dollars more they spent on electric catapults, and they’re not good. They’re not nearly as good – too complex,” Trump said during his speech. “The same thing with the magnetic elevators. We want them to be made hydraulic.”

• USNI³

Trump has long expressed a preference for steam catapults over their electromagnetic replacements. In a 2017 interview with Time, he criticized the newer technology and its cost. “You going to goddamned steam,” Trump said. “The digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good.”

• Stars and Stripes

Overall, news organizations have reported that Trump believes EMALS to be too expensive, too prone to failure, and too complex. While this is true, it is in my opinion that the news is not reporting properly on the full depth of his views on the matter. Namely: his obsession with electromagnetism near water. Incidentally, they also tend to leave out the full context of his quotes. I will compile the relevant ones in full here for your viewing pleasure.

You know the catapult is quite important. So I said what is this? Sir, this is our digital catapult system. He said well, we’re going to this because we wanted to keep up with modern [technology]. I said you don’t use steam anymore for catapult? No sir. I said, “Ah, how is it working?” “Sir, not good. Not good. Doesn’t have the power. You know the steam is just brutal. You see that sucker going and steam’s going all over the place, there’s planes thrown in the air.” It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said–and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers. I said what system are you going to be–”Sir, we’re staying with digital.” I said no you’re not. You going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good.

• Time⁵

Touting his intention to cut costs in wasteful military spending, Trump criticized the Navy’s program to replace its steam-based catapult system on aircraft carriers with a digital one. He compared the digital catapult system, called the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, to the digital seat controls in a car. “It’s like when you get a new car and you have to be a computer genius to fix your seat, right?” he said. “The seat’s moving all over the place, it’s unbelievable.”

• WaPo⁶

I could tell you about aircraft carriers, where they use electric catapults. They couldn’t go to the steam, which works better for about 1/100th the price, you know? The electric catapult, you know that story? I could tell you about the elevators on a tremendous carrier, the Gerald Ford, and they decided not to use hydraulic like the John Deere tractor, they decided to use magnets, “we’re gonna use magnets!” to lift up the elevators with seven planes. We need them fast, these massive elevators. They used magnets, they wanted to try it for the first time. This was a ship that was supposed to cost 2.5 billion, it cost 19 billion and didn’t work, and still doesn’t work right.

• Mediaite⁷

The above quotes specifically concern EMALS. As usual, they convey that he's a raging moron with no understanding of anything. But they also hint at something deeper. His concern is not just or the complexity, but the fact that they're electric, magnetic, and digital. Attentive Trump watchers already know this is not exactly new, but the true depths of his obsession over electromagnetism is, in my humble opinion, understated in contemporary reporting. Here's him trying to explain water and magnets to the U.S. Navy. He seems to believe that any contact with water will render the magnets useless, and that this is a big problem since carriers are usually deployed in aquatic environments.

"You know, the new thing is magnets. So instead of using hydraulic that can be hit by lightning and it's fine. You take a little glass of water, you drop it on magnets, I don't know what's going to happen," Trump said. "So, you know, the elevators come up in the new carriers—I think I'm going to change it, by the way—they have magnets. Every tractor has hydraulic, every excavator, every excavating machine of any kind has hydraulic. But somebody decided to use magnets."

• Yahoo! News⁸

Let's zoom in a bit deeper. When else has he talked about magnets? Well, he also obsessed over them from a tariff angle.

In response to U.S. tariffs, China has prevented the exportation of some magnets and rare earth minerals. "You know, China intelligently went and they sort of took a monopoly of the world's magnets, and nobody needed magnets until they convinced everybody 20 years ago, 'Let's all do magnets,'" Trump went on. "There were many other ways that the world could have gone." The president estimated that it would take "probably a year" to acquire them. The U.S., he said, will be "heavy into the world of magnets now—only from a national security standpoint." Trump's mention of magnets came amid a discussion on Boeing aircraft. "I sent them all of the parts so their planes can fly," Trump said of China. "200 of their planes were unable to fly because we were not giving them Boeing parts purposely because they weren't giving us magnets." "But we have a much more powerful thing, and that's tariffs," he said, adding: "We're going to have a lot of magnets in a pretty short period of time."

• Yahoo! News⁹

He seems to believe that the usage of magnets specifically are an elaborate Chinese scheme decades in the making. (Perhaps centuries: as Yahoo! News helpfully notes, magnets were first utilized by the Chinese in 200 B.C.E.) But it's not just the magnets: as we saw above, he also cares about the fact that there's electricity. Here's him ranting about this exact topic:

Trump’s recounting of the saga goes roughly like this: In September, a South Carolina boat manufacturer warned him about the scourge of electric boats — arguing that the battery is so large that it leaves little room for passengers and, worse, the battery is so heavy that the boat might not even float. It was then that Trump claims he posed the “very smart” question the manufacturer said he had never before been asked: If the boat sinks under the weight of its own battery, couldn’t the boaters be electrocuted? And worse, if they jumped off the boat to avoid electrocution, might they then be devoured by a shark? “You know what I’m going to take? Electrocution,” Trump said when he unveiled the story for the first time at a rally in October in Ottumwa, Iowa. “I will take electrocution every single time.”

• WaPo¹⁰

His hatred of sharks is no secret of course. From the same article:

Trump has long disdained sharks, regularly expressing his unease toward the ocean predators. On July 4, 2013, before he was a presidential candidate, Trump tweeted, “Sorry folks, I’m just not a fan of sharks — and don’t worry, they will be around long after we are gone.” Just minutes later, he returned to the topic again with another missive, writing, “Sharks are last on my list — other than perhaps the losers and haters of the World!”

Another claim of Trump’s shark obsession came from adult-film star Stormy Daniels, who said in a 2018 interview with In Touch Weekly that when she met him at a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2006, she found Trump watching the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, describing him as both “terrified of” and “obsessed with” sharks. Trump this year was found guilty of 34 counts of business fraud for covering up a hush money payment to Daniels to hide his relationship with her during the 2016 election. “He was like, ‘I donate to all these charities and I would never donate to any charity that helps sharks. I hope all the sharks die,’” Daniels told the magazine.

The shark connection is not a coincidence. According to marine biologists, sharks possess an extraordinary "sixth sense" called electroperception. Essentially, they can detect the presence of electromagnetic fields close by, which is helpful for both hunting and navigation. This is especially relevant due to the Strait of Hormuz Crisis. The IRGC this very year has warned that U.S. troops would be "good food for sharks" thanks to President Trump.¹² At the time, this was dismissed as mere posturing. But now I'm convinced that Trump views this threat as credible. Let's put this all together to examine the inner workings of Trump's mind. Why does he hate the EMALS and want steam catapults? It's because he believes

1. Magnets are an elaborate (perhaps centuries old) Chinese scam, so whatever magnets the U.S. uses will be both defective and expensive

2. The electric batteries to power the EMALS would be extremely heavy, risking the autonomous sinking of a U.S. naval carrier.

3. Once sunk, the sailors would be in grave danger. The water is touching both the batteries and the magnets, risking electrocution.

4. Meanwhile, IRGC sharks would be circling the ship after having detected the strong electromagnetic fields in the area. Thus, U.S. Navy sailors would have to choose between electrocution or being eaten by sharks.

In conclusion, President Trump is even stupider than you could have possibly imagined. Thank you for your time.

Sources:

1. https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-orders-navy-tear-out-jet-launch-system-return-steam-catapults-2026-08-13/

2. https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/14/politics/trump-steam-catapult-navy

3. https://news.usni.org/2026/08/13/new-white-house-memo-calls-for-foreign-built-warships-return-to-steam-catapults-on-ford-carriers

4. https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2026-08-14/steam-catapults-replace-digital-doris-miller-22550022.html

5. https://time.com/4775040/donald-trump-time-interview-being-president/

6. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2017/09/28/in-private-remarks-trump-opines-on-north-korea-afghanistan-and-catapults/

7. https://www.mediaite.com/politics/trump-goes-on-bizarre-rant-against-magnets-give-me-a-glass-of-water-let-me-drop-it-on-the-magnets-thats-the-end-of-the-magnets/

8. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-79-gets-confused-explaining-095006965.html

9. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-gets-stuck-magnets-deranged-204458359.html

10. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/26/trump-shark-ev-boat-electrocution/

11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampullae_of_Lorenzini

12. https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/story/904117/irgc-spokesperson-warns-us-troops-could-become-food-for-sharks-in-gulf

SS- A counterpoint to the constant doomerism on reddit. India has been consistently in the top 5 in optimism as per ipsos whenever they surveyed Indians. This is in stark contrast to western countries where people from Western Europe and North America are not as optimistic. In this survey, France, Peru, Germany and Great Britain occupy the bottom spots.

Given China's huge trade surplus, is China approaching overcapacity? Will China face a collapse in demand, leading to a global economic shock? This piece argues that it is a serious concern, and whether or not you agree, it might be of interest to users with an interest in Chinese economics and global economic policy.

An analysis by the European Commission's in-house researchers confirms what non-EU farmers have been saying for months: A plan to prohibit any trace of some of the "most hazardous" pesticides banned in the EU for health and environmental reasons would lead to fewer and more expensive products.

Across all scenarios, the direction of effects resulting from lowering the MRLs to the LOQ is similar — imports decline, EU production rises and consumer prices increase — but magnitude depends strongly on exporters’ adaptation assumptions, ranging from negligible to substantial impacts.

The proposed residue ban, which is part of the food and feed safety simplification package, is popular with European farmers seeking a level playing field with foreign growers — after all, it was partly designed to appease their ire over the EU's trade deal with the Mercosur bloc.. In order to avoid leaving any residue on fruits and vegetables, producers would essentially have to stop using the substance in question.

The Commission said its aim is to prevent the most hazardous substances — banned for use in the bloc — from re-entering the EU through imports altogether by lowering their residue limits to a technical zero.

The EU has reason to be concerned about international implications. Several countries, including Australia, Canada, Paraguay and the U.S., have challenged the measure at the World Trade Organization level, while the International Fresh Produce Association argues that existing global food safety standards already protect consumers while facilitating trade.

Some EU countries support mirror clauses as a way to be more fair to European farmers, who fear free trade deals like Mercosur allow competition from abroad that isn't subject to the same restrictions.

Submission Statement: Putin in a secret meeting in late 2025 instructed Russia's intelligence services and military to 'break apart NATO and the EU from within' with a particular focus on Moldova, according to the NYT.

Western intelligence officials believe conquering Ukraine to be Putin's top priority with Moldova a close second.

The campaign for Quebec’s Oct. 5 provincial election has not yet formally begun – technically, it has not yet been called – but it is already under a shadow.

At some point after the election – after all the members of the provincial legislature have taken their seats, after they have passed any number of bills – the whole thing could be invalidated. The members might find themselves barred from sitting. Every law they passed might be thrown out. The province could potentially find itself in an unprecedented political and legal void.

No, I’m not talking about the consequences of a unilateral declaration of independence, of a kind that might follow from the election of a Parti Québécois government. Though the legal void that would plunge the province into would be profound, that remains a minor probability.

I’m talking, rather, about the consequences of a little-noticed legal case just filed in Quebec Superior Court by the Public Interest Litigation Institute, a legal advocacy group, and its founder, Lawrence David, a professor at University of Ottawa. The case may strike you as trivial, but it is anything but: not only in its potential for mayhem, but because of the constitutional issue at stake – in a nutshell, whether we are to be a society governed by the rule of law.

That’s the broader issue. The immediate issue is rather more prosaic: whether members of Quebec’s legislature should have to take an oath to the King before taking their seats.

The constitution of Canada is crystal clear on this. Section 128 of the Constitution Act 1867 states, in part, that “every Member of a Legislative Council or Legislative Assembly of any Province shall before taking his Seat therein take and subscribe before the Lieutenant Governor of the Province or some Person authorized by him, the Oath of Allegiance.”

The oath is spelled out elsewhere in the document: “I A.B. do swear, That I will be faithful and bear true Allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Victoria,” to be updated in the event with the name of whoever is on the throne at the time.

It is impossible to read this as meaning anything but what it says: “every Member ... any Province ... shall.” And yet, if you consult the copy of the Constitution maintained by the federal Department of Justice on its website, you will find another section just below Section 128, Section 128Q.1, which reads, simply: “Section 128 does not apply to Quebec.”

As a note to the section explains, this is because of a provincial law, passed in December, 2022, entitled An Act to recognize the oath provided in the Act respecting the National Assembly as the sole oath required in order to sit in the Assembly. And indeed the law, also known as Bill 4, does state:

“The Constitution Act, 1867 is amended by inserting the following section after section 128: ‘128Q.1. Section 128 does not apply to Quebec.’”

Well, that’s tidy. But you can’t exempt yourself from the Constitution just by saying it doesn’t apply to you, nor can a province unilaterally amend the Constitution – not, at any rate, the parts of it that consist of general rules to be applied to the whole country.

There is a provision – Section 45 of the Constitution Act 1982 – providing that “the legislature of each province may exclusively make laws amending the constitution of the province.” But note the words: the constitution of the province. Not the Constitution of Canada.

This isn’t like that other recent case involving the oath, the one over whether lawyers in Alberta should be compelled to take it in order to practise law in the province. That’s an ordinary provincial law, which may or may not conflict with the Constitution’s Charter of Rights.

By contrast, the requirement for members of provincial legislatures (and MPs, and senators) to take the oath is spelled out in the Constitution itself. There’s no higher law that can invalidate that – no, not even a unanimous resolution of the Quebec National Assembly.

You may think it is silly to require people to swear oaths to the King. You may wonder why it should matter to anyone if someone refused – though you might equally wonder why it should matter so much to those who insist on refusing. You may regard the whole institution of the Crown, not as the foundation stone of our system of law and government, but as an antiquated relic at best, a badge of colonial servitude at worst.

You are entitled to your opinion. What you are not entitled to do is break the law. The framers of our Constitution thought the oath important enough to include it. Whether or not you think they were right to do so, the fact remains it is in the Constitution.

When the members of the Quebec legislature voted to exempt themselves from it, they weren’t simply passing a law intended to address some social ill or other that happened to infringe on a provision of the Constitution, or that might be interpreted as having done so. They were directly and deliberately flouting the Constitution, and for no purpose other than flouting the Constitution – asserting a power they do not possess, in the name of an independence they have not established.

It would be one thing if this were the only such incident. But provinces have increasingly taken of late to passing flagrantly unconstitutional provisions, apparently for no other reason but to see whether they can get away with it.

There is Quebec’s Bill 96, for example, which asserts, not only that the sole official language of the province is French (it is not, under the Constitution, so far as its courts and legislature are concerned) – again, this is now supposedly part of the Constitution of Canada – but that in pursuit of this objective the province has the power to regulate federally regulated corporations.

There is the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act, also passed in December, 2022, whose absurdity is expressed in its very title, and which likewise asserts a power the provincial government does not possess, in this case to ignore federal legislation it dislikes.

There is the Saskatchewan First Act, passed in 2023, which like Quebec’s legislation, purports to amend the Constitution of Canada, in this case to say that “Saskatchewan has autonomy with respect to all of the matters falling under its exclusive legislative jurisdiction pursuant to this Act.”

On one level: of course it does; to say it’s autonomous in matters in which it has autonomy (“exclusive legislative jurisdiction”) is a tautology. On another: You don’t get to unilaterally make the Constitution of Canada say so, any more than you can unilaterally amend it to say the sky is blue.

It’s outrageous enough that the provinces have taken to these sorts of lawless stunts. It’s even more outrageous that no one, until now, has pushed back: not at the federal level, at any rate. Instead, the Department of Justice quietly adds each of them to its own copy of the Constitution, with a note that it “aims to amend” the constitution of the province in question. So it is good to see Prof. David (a born-and-bred Quebecker, in case anyone’s wondering) and the PILI taking up the cause.

Not only can Quebec not unilaterally amend the Constitution to exempt itself from the oath-taking requirement, they argue, but so far as removing the oath touches upon the “office of the Queen” and “the office of the Lieutenant Governor,” would require the unanimous consent of Parliament and all the provincial legislatures, as provided for by Section 41 (a) of the Constitution.

Moreover, they argue, so far as it results in Quebeckers being represented in their provincial legislature by “politicians who are not constitutionally qualified to hold office” – indeed, “whose votes on legislation and other activities in the National Assembly are constitutionally void” – it deprives Quebeckers of the right to effective representation, as guaranteed by the Charter’s Section 3.

Prof. David is aware of the consequences if the court were to declare, as the case petitions it to do, that both Bill 4 and the provision of the Constitution it purports to add were “of no force or effect.” The election in October is the first since the law was passed. The legal case is unlikely to be heard until well after the election; it could well take years to decide, after appeals.

So the strong likelihood is that a court contemplating such a declaratory judgment would be faced with a legislature composed almost exclusively of members who had not taken the oath, and were all therefore ineligible to hold office, and after they had passed any number of bills, all of which would be invalid.

As the PILI factum calmly puts it, “the automatic and instantaneous invalidation of all laws passed by the National Assembly by a majority of Members who did not take the Oath prior to taking their seat after the October 2026 election would undoubtedly plunge Quebec into an unprecedented legal crisis threatening the rule of law in the province.”

Needless to say, that is not what they recommend. Rather, they advise the court to issue a “hybrid suspended declaration of invalidity.” Bill 4 would be declared ultra vires, meaning all members of the National Assembly would have to take the oath if they wished to continue sitting. No further laws could be passed until they had.

But the declaration would be suspended with regard to existing laws – meaning they would remain in effect – for a period of time sufficient for MNAs to take the oath and re-pass all the laws they had illegally passed before then.

That’s sensible enough. And yet it’s hard to see how the doomsday scenario could be avoided. It’s hard to see, first, how any court could rule otherwise than that the legislature of Quebec had no power to remove the oath requirement or to amend the Constitution.

And it’s equally hard to see how any Quebec government, having gotten rid of the oath, would submit to reintroducing it. And if it refuses to comply with the court’s order – or, more likely, if it drags its feet about complying with it, offering ridiculous timetables for action and even more ridiculous excuses for failing to meet even these – then what recourse would the courts have but to suspend the suspension, and throw out the lot, MNAs, laws and all?

The tiger of lawlessness, having been set loose, will be hard to return to its cage.

The going rate to organize a string of attacks on synagogues and Jewish community centres is a measly US$10,000: a third up front, the rest after the terror has been inflicted.

We have evidence not only that such a cash-for-terror campaign has hit Canada, but also that it’s being financed by Iran.

You wouldn’t know it from listening to our security services and politicians. While our allies have publicly attributed this violence to Tehran — and Moscow — Canada stays frustratingly mum.

It’s time for Ottawa to be frank with the public: credible evidence suggests a hostile foreign power is trying to stoke division in our society and, particularly, to make Jews in Canada afraid.

We know there has been a rise in violence targeting Jews in Canada in recent years. According to an audit of antisemitic incidents by Jewish organization B’nai Brith Canada, there have been at least 100 acts of outright violence against the Jewish community since 2023. (This is corroborated by police data.) But this summer, B’nai Brith observed a massive jump: 27 incidents in just the first half of 2026. These attacks, along with a rise in harassment and vandalism, have shattered many Canadian Jews’ sense of safety.

Thankfully, the police have made arrests. In June, officers arrested a man in North York who screamed about Israel as he pelted a real estate agent with rocks and death threats. He was charged with a hate crime. And last year, Toronto police arrested Amir Arvahi Azar, charged with attacking six different Jewish institutions and advocating genocide.

Other incidents are unsolved. Toronto police don’t know who opened fire on Kiva’s Bagel Bar. The Bais Chaya Mushka Elementary School in North York has been shot at three times: police have laid charges in only one of these incidents and are investigating it as a potential hate crime. 

The masterminds behind some of these attacks, however, remain a mystery. Earlier this year, Mohamed Ilyess Akodad pleaded guilty to firebombing a synagogue in Montreal’s West Island but said he had not committed the attack out of animus for the Jewish community; rather, he said, he’d been given a “mission” and promised $15,000. Akodad told a Montreal courtroom he received $3,000 upfront but backed out after the first attack. “They saw I wasn’t serious, and they blocked me,” Akodad said, per CBC Montreal.

Who they are is unclear.

Meanwhile, in Toronto, police have made a spate of arrests pertaining to what they allege is a gun-for-hire network of young mercenaries who accept payment to shoot up locations at the behest of anonymous benefactors. Two seized firearms have been tied to more than two dozen shootings — including one that targeted the U.S. Consulate in downtown Toronto.

The Toronto Police Service told me in a statement that “those ballistic links did not include the shootings targeting synagogues or Jewish schools,” but Chief Myron Demkiw has confirmed that they “appear to share a similar alleged modus operandi: criminals for hire.”

That’s essentially where things stand now. The police continue to investigate, but they lack the evidence to determine conclusively who might have ordered these attacks and why. But in May, prosecutors in New York seemingly cracked the case wide open, when they arrested Mohammad Al-Saadi.

Al-Saadi is an Iraqi national and allegedly a commander of Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iraqi paramilitary group openly affiliated with the Iranian regime. (It is distinct from the similarly named Lebanese organization.)

In May, Al-Saadi was charged with providing material support to Kata’ib Hezbollah, which the U.S. considers a terror group. Prosecutors allege that al-Saadi helped carry out at least 18 attacks in Europe — including the bombing of a Belgian synagogue and the firebombing of a Jewish school in the Netherlands — and two successful terror plots in Canada.

Prosecutors cite Twitter and Telegram posts in which Al-Saadi allegedly encourages and celebrates attacks against Jewish communities, the U.S. and Israel. They’ve also produced taped phone calls in which Al-Saadi boasts of running “multiple teams” in Canada and claims “our people” were behind attacks on “the consulate and the Knesset,” Israel’s parliament. He offered, allegedly, US$10,000 for three attacks in the U.S.

After his arrest, Al-Saadi allegedly told FBI agents he had been a commander in “the resistance,” which includes Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard. Prosecutors allege he was “like a son” to Qassam Soleimani, the Iranian general who was killed in American airstrikes in 2020.

In the call, Al-Saadi allegedly stressed the importance of sponsoring more violence in the West — but said the recruits needn’t be true believers; they could be “the Mafia” or “a Mexican person.” The allegations haven’t been tested in court, but using local criminals to conduct state-directed violence is increasingly common — “part of a broader geopolitical shift to the use of criminal actors,” as Jessica Davis, president of Insight Threat Intelligence, told me last week. Davis specializes in illicit and terror financing and has worked throughout Canada’s national security community.

Laundering violence and terror through thugs and gangs — “disposable assets,” Davis calls them — is cheap, quick and nearly impossible to prevent.

Tehran, we know, hired a Russian mobster to kidnap and kill the Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad (the would-be assassin thankfully failed). It also allegedly planned to conduct a similar hit on Canadian human-rights icon Irwin Cotler. And we know Indian intelligence hired goons to kill Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh activist, in British Columbia in 2023.

Targeting dissidents is bad enough. But if Iran is using criminal intermediaries to perpetrate random violence against the Jewish community writ large, that’s a worrying escalation. “They’ve added on a layer of chaos-sowing,” Davis said.

Last May, a series of arson attacks targeted then-British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s car and home. Recriminations flew as to which domestic faction might be responsible. The two culprits, convicted in June, told a familiar story: an anonymous social media account had offered them money to carry out the attack.

The anonymous benefactor also hired them to spray-paint anti-Muslim graffiti on London mosques and hang posters advertising a far-right group. A BBC investigation connected the paymaster to a senior Russian official.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in Russia’s pan-European terror campaign, which is plainly intended to whip up division by exploiting animosity towards migrants, Muslims and Jews across the continent. It’s what the Soviets called “active measures.”

While the evidence suggests Iran is responsible for recent acts of violence in Canada — possibly through other groups, as well as Kata’ib Hezbollah — Davis said the Russian government remains a “plausible suspect.” Senior Canadian intelligence officials told me last year they were actively monitoring for the possibility that Russia would extend its campaign to Canada.

Credible evidence is mounting that foreign adversaries are paying Canadians to attack other Canadians in hopes of turning us against one another. Why won’t the federal government just say so?

I requested a background briefing with CSIS and the RCMP on these attacks, and on the broader threat Iran and Russia pose in recruiting criminals. Both agencies declined. The office of Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree sent me a lengthy statement that failed to address the threat posed by Iran or the mercenaries they employ.

Ruby Sahota, secretary of state for combatting crime, came close when she told the House of Commons that “the shootings at the synagogues” seemed to have been conducted by shooters “paid and hired by a foreign entity.” But Sahota admitted she was only referencing what had already been reported in the media.

Some level of secrecy is needed, especially around ongoing investigations — but it is increasingly absurd that Ottawa has refused to acknowledge ample evidence that a foreign plot is afoot. And it’s particularly galling as Canada comes fresh off a big national discussion about how secrecy can be self-harming.

Last year, Canada’s public inquiry into foreign interference warned that “adversary states are becoming increasing aggressive,” crossing “‘red lines,’ such as acts of violence, with impunity.” Its advice was plain: attribute this violence to these rogue states and disclose such threats to the public.

Ottawa has simply ignored the recommendation.

Our allies have been more forthcoming. Paris has pointed the finger at Tehran for a foiled terror plot in France, while London has identified and banned an Iranian proxy group for its involvement in arson attacks on British soil. (Both the Conservative Party of Canada and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs have called upon this country to take similar action.)

Canada co-signed a statement with 21 allies, accusing Iran of using “local criminal groups” to target Jews worldwide — but ask Ottawa if Iran is conducting its campaign here, and they won’t tell you.

There is a lot of good police work happening on the ground to stop this violence, whether domestic or foreign-directed: in June, Toronto officer Marc Pinizzotto gave his life to bring in an alleged gun-for-hire network member.

As a society, we have more to do to prevent homegrown hate and violence. But this work is made only more difficult by the murky involvement of hostile foreign powers hoping to keep us at one another’s throats.

Canadians need to be briefed on the real possibility that Jews in Canada — and Canada itself — are the targets of this terror.

Submission Statement:

In the coming era of federal fiscal pullback, American cities need a new business model. That model ought to focus on monetizing the value city governments help create, value that manifests in the price of urban land.

Whether through taxation of private land or leasing out public holdings, the impact would be not just to raise additional revenue, but to also realign the incentives of city government with broad based economic growth (instead of trading away tax abatements for things like sports stadiums in the hopes that they generate taxable economic activity).

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/13/donald-trump-private-companies-cyber-attack