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Opinion

Does Scottish gov’t turmoil signal the end of the ‘green’ agenda’s stranglehold on Europe?

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Former Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf

From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

‘Green’ politics is now understood as a campaign for electoral and national suicide. With the coming European elections the writing is on the wall for globalist ‘progressives’ across the continent.

The First Minister of Scotland, Humza Yousaf, quit on live television on April 29, following the collapse of his left/Green Party coalition government. A power sharing agreement between his bizarrely named Scottish National Party (SNP) and the Greens was broken over the SNP’s retreat on Net Zero commitments.

Despite his camera savvy assertions, Yousaf’s departure has nothing to do with either duty or principle, which he stressed in the speech announcing his resignation. It is the result of a feared public backlash against higher taxes, over-regulation, and the madness of progressive “green” policies which prefigures a European political realignment.

READ: Net Zero’s days are numbered? Why Europeans are souring on the climate agenda

Yousaf’s coalition with the Greens fell apart because his SNP had recognized that the extreme Net Zero agenda was unrealistic, and could deliver only electoral suicide. The SNP under Yousaf had abandoned its “decarbonization targets” in early April, with Green co-leaders Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie describing Yousaf’s attempts to ditch extremely unpopular policies as “an act of political cowardice” and a “betrayal.”

As a result, the Greens withdrew support from the SNP, which fell one seat short of a majority in 2021. A new deal with a new leader is unlikely, and the chaos spells doom for the SNP with an election coming this year. The SNP remains in power – for the time being – albeit in a minority government.

Wider lessons for globalist ‘greens’

The lesson from Scotland is that the liberal parties of Europe face electoral meltdown. A recent report from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) warned of a “sharp right turn” following EU elections in June:

Inside the European Parliament, a populist right coalition of Christian democrats, conservatives, and radical right MEPs could emerge with a majority for the first time.

The future spells doom for the doomsayers, it seems, with the globalist agenda under severe threat. The existence of the globalist EU itself may be threatened, with Unherd saying in December that this decade may be the EU’s last.

The ECFR report continued:

This ‘sharp right turn’ is likely to have significant consequences for European-level policies, which will affect the foreign policy choices that the EU can make, particularly on environmental issues, where the new majority is likely to oppose ambitious EU action to tackle climate change.

Germany next?

The SNP’s partnership in power with the “green” zealots mirrors that of the government of Europe’s former economic and industrial powerhouse, Germany.

The crisis-hit Scholz administration relies on the support of a Green party whose policies have not only devastated the economy with deindustrializationlockdown debt, and soaring energy prices, but have also, as in Scotland, advanced a raft of extremist “progressive” issues, such as the promotion of the “trans” movement, opposition to border and immigration control, with both Green parties pursuing policies strongly resented by the public.

Greens Go Further! Green Party campaign leaflet, Berlin, 2021

Scotland’s Greens sought to ban wood-burning stoves, and Germany’s Greens were met with similar outrage with their decision to ban gas-fired central heating, and mandate the use of heat pumps. Yet the money for the subsidies required has run out – as “green” policies have helped to destroy the economy.

The Greens succeeded in closing the last of Germany’s nuclear power stations in August 2023, but the policy of replacing home heating which works with an expensive alternative that does not, was met with widespread opposition.

As a result, it is not just heat pump sales that have plummeted in Germany, but the sales pitch of the international “green” lobby.

Faced with defeat in the European elections, which the ECFR blames on “national parties start[ing] to respond to the changing opinions of their voters,” many parties of the liberal establishment are rowing back on Net Zero commitments – as well as on other issues beloved of the shock-haired shock troops of “progress.”

The face of globalist progressives

The co-leader of the Scottish Greens is Patrick Harvie, whose social media accounts notify readers that his pronouns are he/him.

The causes he supports are an object lesson in how Net Zero is not the only crazy agenda aggressively pushed by the Greens, whose policy platform is increasingly seen as electorally toxic. He is a self-described member of the so-called “LGBTQ+ community,” identifying as “bisexual.”

Like many progressive fanatics, he strongly supports the futile and avoidable destruction of the population and nation of Ukraine.

Here he is in 2020, championing the prescription of hormones and surgery to sexualized children as “trans healthcare.”

Naturally, he repeatedly describes Christians with disdain, labelling the Christian Institute as a “hate group.” The institute “campaigns for “the furtherance and promotion of the Christian religion in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.”

As Britain’s Telegraph reported, explaining the background to the collapse of Yousaf’s SNP-Green coalition:

Harvie’s determination to indulge his permanently-angry purple-haired activists even at the expense of the Scottish Government’s credibility was probably the last straw for many senior SNP ministers, if not for Yousaf himself.

Harvie is a strong advocate of abortion. He and his party describe the reminder that the lives of unborn children have value as “misinformation and intimidation,” as they seek to afford “dignity and privacy” to women killing their children, “as they are at every other medical procedure.”

SPUC, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, pointed out that the measure to legally enforce “buffer zones” around abortion facilities was “opposed by 70 percent” of the Scottish public.

The Greens in Scotland, as in Germany, vehemently oppose any attempt to control mass migration – however weak and belated.

The Greens have also refused to alter their stance on the now discredited notion of “gender affirming care” for children.

Against scientific advice, the Greens prefer to support the views of the “trans community,” saying “lived experience” is a better guide to reality than the clinical evidence that prescribing hormones and surgery to confused children is wrong, and causes irreversible harm.

The U.K.’s Cass Review, published in mid-April, cited a lack of “evidence based guidelines,” noting that pro-transgender organizations such as WPATH had exerted considerable influence in the adoption of the Dutch Pathway – a template which resulted in rapid access to hormones and surgery including for children.

Cass said in her introduction, “Although some think the clinical approach should be based on a social justice model, the NHS works in an evidence-based way.”

The rejection of the fast track to “puberty blockers” mirrors a similar preference for evidence-based decisions in Western electorates.

The Godless, nation-wrecking policies of national suicide have produced enough evidence of the motives, methods, and monumental disaster of the globalist Green agenda. It is anti-natalist, pro-open borders, anti-family, and seeks to promote the sexual distortion of the lives of what few children we still have. In a final irony, is also destroying the economic prosperity on whose subsidies it relies for its own survival.

Happily, “green” politics is now understood as a campaign for electoral as well as national suicide. This realization has spelled the end of the appalling Scottish coalition government, and with the coming European elections the writing is on the wall for globalist “progressives” across the continent.

Humza Yousaf’s left/Green government was just the first Green-backed coalition which has ended in disaster. It will not be the last. For the reality based community, the best news is yet to come.

Media

Reporters determined to drive their industry and its reputation into the abyss one Tweet at a time

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Last week, my column for The Hub was about why journalists, for the sake of journalism, should avoid posting on Twitter/X.

It took mere hours for my advice to be wrapped up in a ball and shoved right back at me when Robert Fife, a reporter of many years experience (he’s even older than I am) and the Globe and Mail’s Ottawa bureau chief, posted in response to the House of Commons’ vote on a Conservative motion to approve pipelines that:

“Conservatives persist with cute legislative tricks, while the government tries to run a country.”

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While he’s free to do so and obviously views things differently, it is quite beyond me why the bureau chief of a distinguished journalism organization would expose himself so casually to accusations of bearing a bias – particularly given public concern about government funding of media – and so I responded by sharing Fife’s post with the comment:

“I’m old-fashioned enough to think reporters shouldn’t be blatantly stating biases. Not a great way to retain public trust.”

Now, I was aware that Fife was sharing a headlined opinion column by a colleague, Robyn Urback. But Urback is perfectly capable of promoting her own work and if Fife’s sole motivation was to neutrally share her column, it would’ve been fine if he had posted something like: “Here’s one perspective on yesterday’s House of Commons vote.”

Some people suggested the post was OK because it was only sharing someone else’s viewpoint and a headline. But Fife’s appearance on CBCNN’s Power and Politics – in which he enthusiastically described the Opposition as “childish” and criticized it for criticizing the government – made it appear the Tweet was otherwise motivated. Not everyone in today’s newsrooms shares my view that reporters should do everything in their power to be viewed as objective. Fair enough. While the aspiration remains popular with the public, it is no longer favoured by many, maybe even most, modern journalists.

Fife’s been a good reporter for decades going back to long before Twitter. He’s been announced as the 2026 recipient of the Public Policy Forum’s Hy Solomon award for excellence in public policy journalism. There are also some exceptionally good reporters at the Globe and Mail such as Grant Robertson, who has won nine National Newspaper Awards – more than anyone, ever, and eight more than me. There is no evidence I can find that Robertson, like a lot of other very good journalists, even has an account on X/Twitter. I have absolutely no idea or suspicions concerning what he thinks about anything going on in the world and I think that is how journalists should aspire to be perceived. But when social media posts by other reporters bring into question journalists’ reputations as fair brokers of the events of the day, his prudent behaviour isn’t enough to keep the entire craft from suffering reputational damage. As the old saying goes, newspapers don’t report when airplanes land safely – a phrase that applies equally to reporters, of which, according to the latest Global Media and Internet Concentration Project report, there were 1,600 fewer in Canada last year.

All that said, I don’t think anyone cares enough to do anything about it. Despite considerable evidence detailing journalism’s decline as a trusted institution, the overwhelming majority of its practitioners appear to me to have no intention whatsoever of altering course.

It looks like time has passed me by. As Leonard Cohen sang, “I’m old and the mirrors don’t lie.” So I will just continue to tilt at windmills for a little longer and then decide if there aren’t more rewarding things to do.

So Tweet away, journos, Tweet away. Tweet all the way into the abyss.


The colloquial nature of many newsrooms continues to fascinate, the latest example being treatment of Bill C-9, which expands the powers of Canada’s hate criminal speech legislation. Already problematic from a free speech perspective, the deal Justice Minister Sean Fraser struck with the Bloc Quebecois to ensure its passage has alarmed both the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Council of Canadian Muslims.

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That’s because in exchange for the Bloc’s support, Fraser will amend C-9 so that it removes the exemption given to statements made based on sincerely held religious beliefs. The exemption states: “if, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text.”

But, just as our media refuse to acknowledge developments beyond our borders on trans issues and health care models, they remain rube-ishly reluctant to look at what happens when quoting from the Bible becomes a police matter. I wrote about it elsewhere and, given that I am planning a Christmas break, will re-post that piece next week. In the meantime it will be interesting to see if any Canadian media or commentators pick up on the case of Päivi Räsänen, a medical doctor and Member of the Finnish Parliament. She and Bishop Juhana Pohjola of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, twice acquitted, are awaiting the outcome of their third trial on allegations of criminal hate for quoting passages of the Bible regarding a church Pride event. If found guilty, they will face up to two years in prison, the same as in Canada.


The bad news for journalists working within traditional media structures continues.

The Nieman Lab predictions for 2026 forecast that Artificial Intelligence will continue to grow as a source of information for the public.

The good news?

“Tech companies will face pressure in the year ahead to bolster the information ecosystem.”

The bad news?

“Tech companies will realize they don’t need journalism to give people the answers they need.”

The conclusion?

“The threats we (journalists) face are existential, but we can reframe them as opportunities.”


Postmedia columnist Brian Lilley is definitely playing journalism with his elbows up these days.

Last week, he challenged his colleagues in the industry to question the activist group Coastal First Nations on its funding by US interests.

“Here’s an open challenge to the Parliamentary Press Gallery who will be covering the CEO of Coastal First Nations appearing in Ottawa,” he posted on Twitter. “Ask them what rights and title they hold to any of the land in question.

“Ask them about American funding.”

Near as I could tell, he didn’t get any takers and the industry will continue to present the anti-pipeline group as organic. But, just in case, I checked and Lilley’s response was “Hahahahahahhaha!”

Earlier, he firmly put CBCNN Power and Politics host David Cochrane in his place with a Facebook post stating “I’ve never seen an anchor in any country, on any network, push left-wing Liberal talking points as hard as Cochrane.”

Whew! Brian won’t be popular at parties.


Finally, a bouquet to Peter Mazereeuw of The Hill Times for the literary flourish with which he described the anonymous sources so routinely used by press gallery journalists who pretend they aren’t authorized to speak.

Justice Minister Sean “Fraser is currently in a bit of hot water with the PMO, which sent forth some of its anonymous flying monkeys yesterday to tell the CBC that he had not gotten its approval for his deal with the Bloc Québécois ….”

Remember that term.


Happy Hannukah. May your candles burn bright.


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(Peter Menzies is a commentator and consultant on media, Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow, a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, a former vice chair of the CRTC and a National Newspaper Award winner.)

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Crime

Hero bystander disarms shooter in Australian terror attack

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MXM logo MxM News

The chaos that struck Australia on Sunday night produced one moment of astonishing courage: a Sydney shopkeeper, armed with nothing but instinct and grit, charged a gunman at Bondi Beach and wrestled the rifle out of his hands as terrified families ran for cover. Authorities say the act likely prevented even more deaths in what officials have already called an antisemitic terror attack that left 12 people dead and dozens wounded during a Hanukkah celebration along the water.

The hero has been identified as 43-year-old fruit shop owner Ahmed Al Ahmed, a father of two who happened to be nearby when gunfire erupted at the beachfront event “Hanukkah by the Sea,” which had drawn more than 200 people. Footage captured the moment he marched toward the shooter, grabbed hold of the rifle, and overpowered him in a brief, violent struggle. As the gunman hit the pavement, Al Ahmed momentarily pointed the weapon back at him but didn’t fire, instead placing it against a tree before another attacker opened up from a bridge above. He was hit in the hand and shoulder and is now recovering after emergency surgery.

A relative told Australia’s Channel Seven that Al Ahmed had never handled a gun in his life. “He’s a hero — he’s 100 percent a hero,” the family member said. New South Wales Premier Chris Minns echoed the praise, calling the scene “unbelievable,” adding, “A man walked up to someone who had just fired on the community and single-handedly disarmed him. Many people are alive tonight because of his bravery.”

Police say two shooters stepped out of a vehicle along Campbell Parade around 6:40 p.m. and began firing toward the beach. One gunman was killed, the other is in custody in critical condition. Detectives are also investigating whether a third attacker was involved, and bomb units swept the area after reports that an explosive device may have been planted beneath a pedestrian bridge. The toll is staggering: 12 dead, including one shooter, and at least 29 wounded — among them children and two police officers.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned what he called “a targeted attack on Jewish Australians on the first day of Hanukkah,” saying, “What should have been a night of joy and peace has been shattered by this horrifying evil attack.” Emergency crews flooded the beach as hundreds of panicked people sprinted away from the gunfire. Video shows one attacker firing down toward the sand from the bridge behind Bondi Park before being shot himself in a final standoff captured by drone footage. Both gunmen appeared to be carrying ammunition belts, with witnesses estimating up to 50 rounds were fired.

Australian police have cordoned off properties linked to the suspects and continue to canvass Bondi for additional threats. What remains clear is that Sunday’s attack was met with extraordinary acts of self-sacrifice, none more dramatic than a shopkeeper from Sutherland who walked into gunfire to stop further slaughter.

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