"Leaving Wokeness and Weakness Behind"

"In accordance with policy now reinstated, service members who have a current diagnosis or history of or exhibit symptoms consistent with gender dysphoria may elect to separate voluntarily. [If they chose not to do so by the deadline, they would be removed] involuntarily, if necessary."

"This is the president's agenda. This is what the American people voted for."

"TRANS is out at the DOD."

"No more pronouns, no more climate-change obsessions, no more emergency vaccine mandates, no more dudes in dresses." 

"We are leaving WOKENESS AND WEAKNESS behind. No more pronouns. We are done with that sh*t."

U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth

 

"There’s no guarantee to access to your pension or severance or an honorable discharge, [for trans service members who do not take the current buyout offer and could lose out on benefits that took years of service to build]."

"This is not voluntary. This is a decision that folks are coming to under duress."

"These are 1,000 transgender troops that would be serving if the conditions were not created to force them into making a decision for their own well-being, or the well-being of their family long-term."

Rae Timberlake, spokesperson for Sparta Pride

Transgender troops have between 30 and 60 days to self-separate from the military after a court order allowed the ban on their service to move forward, according to a Thursday memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

The Defence Secretary's directive is expected to bring the careers of thousands of American military service members to an abrupt conclusion. Some 1,000 troops have self-identified as having been given a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, according to the Pentagon, in response to Hegseth's memo directed to senior military leaders. The number is debatable, considered to be quite a bit higher by advocates for transgender service members.

 

From the guidelines issued on Thursday it was not immediately evident how the Pentagon will proceed in an effort to remove any transgender troops who have failed to disclose such a personal diagnosis. A month has been given to transgender personnel serving on active duty to voluntarily leave the service. Reservists have been given 60 days for their voluntary withdrawal. All of them may be eligible for separation pay, but once the deadlines pass the Pentagon will transition to involuntarily separate those who remain.

 

The announcement came two days following a divided ruling in Shilling v. Trump by the U.S. Supreme Court, allowing President Donald Trump to move on with an executive order to bar transgender men and women from the military while a lower court entertains litigation over the underlying policy. In hearings for a separate legal challenge, the Justice Department argued that the policy was not discriminatory since it did not apply to all transgender service members, but those only who suffer or have suffered from gender dysphoria.

 

"The haste with which the military is moving reflects a callous disregard for the brave troops who have put their lives on the line for this country. It is a disgrace", stated Jennifer Levi, the lead attorney in Talbott v. Trump with its 32 trans plaintiffs. Over 4,000 transgender men and women diagnosed with gender dysphoria were first permitted to serve openly beginning in 2016. The Trump executive order grants exceptions for those service members directly supporting "warfighting capabilities".

 

Those who succeed in obtaining a waiver must prove they never attempted to physically transition from one gender to the other. Certain restrictions prohibiting them from changing rooms, bathrooms and showers designated for people of the opposite sex will apply to them. They will also be required to meet fitness standards associated with their sex at birth. 

 

Pentagon officials defended the ban, stating: "The medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria are incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service." Psychotherapy, gender-affirming hormone therapy, gender-affirming surgery and other treatment for service members totalled $52 million between 2015 and 2024, according to a defense official speaking on condition of anonymity. 

"Additionally, the Military Departments will immediately begin processing for separation Service members who previously self-identified for voluntary separation prior to March 26, 2025."

"Service by individuals with a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibiting symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria is not in the best interest of the Military Services and is not clearly consistent with the interests of national security."

U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth

A transgender woman speaks as military veterans and their supporters protested against President Donald Trump's policies in March. (Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Putin: "Truth and Justice are on our Side"

Russian service members at the Victory Day parade in Moscow on Friday.  Credit...Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press

"Truth and justice are on our side."

"The whole country, society, people support the participants of the special military operations."

"[Their determination and bravery has] brought us only victory."

Russian President Vladimir Putin

 

"The presence of world leaders demonstrated that Western efforts to isolate him [Putin] and defeat Russia have failed."

"It is positioning of Russia as an important part of the world."

Tatiana Stanovaya, senior fellow, Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center

Military vehicles, including some of Russia’s armored vehicles used in its invasion of Ukraine, were on display during the parade.  Credit...Kirill Kudryavtsev/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

On Friday, Russian tanks, missiles and drones rumbled their way grandly through Red Square at the annual Victory Day parade to celebrate the surrender of Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Some two dozen world leaders joined Russia's President, emphasizing a victory for Vladimir Putin, whom Western Europe, North America and the 'free world' of democratic nations have sanctioned over his fullscale military invasion of Ukraine which he still labels a 'special military operation'.

 

The presence of those world leaders signify that Mr. Putin's isolation is not quite as universal as it should be, as evidenced by the kind of support that disappoints those who support Ukraine, and delights countries like Iran, China and North Korea. In the years immediately following the invasion, the yearly Victory Day celebration was a more muted affair, and Mr. Putin must surely have felt a little lonely surveying it on his own.

 

Reuters

 

This year's 80th anniversary has seen Chinese President Xi Jinping, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and the leaders of Slovakia, Serbia, Egypt, Vietnam, Venezuela and others representing Russian-friendly countries to Moscow's most solemn commemoration. In the leadup to the event, Putin projected himself as a confident, respected global leader near to completion of his defeat of Ukraine. For him, there is comfort in the distance that has emerged between Europe, the United States and Ukraine.

 

Iskander ballistic missiles, Russian drones, Tornado-S multiple rocket launchers and TOS-2 Tosochka heavy flame-thrower systems -- all of which have been used in the war against Ukraine -- were on display at the parade. With them rolled the Russian Yars nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile.

 

Sitting beside Xi during the event, Putin often leaned over to speak with his guest, through an interpreter. Following the parade, Putin shook hands with Russian servicemen who fought in the war along with foreign military officers, all of whom saluted him, including a group of senior military officials from North Korea. North Korean special forces have been fighting with Russia to drive the Ukrainian military out of southern Russia's Kursk region.

 

Putin hugs a North Korean officer on Red Square  Ria Novosti

 

While Russia and its allies watched the march-through on Red Square, a group of European foreign ministers were in Ukraine to sign off on a special tribunal to prosecute high-level Russian officials for their aggressive crimes against Ukraine. Foreign ministers from France, Germany and Britain visited Lviv, to formally endorse the tribunal to be set up by the Council of Europe human rights watchdog.

 

The tribunal gained endorsement of 37 states, including most E.U. countries, Britain, Canada and Norway. While Washington had been involved in tribunal talks, under Trump the United States has withdrawn its presence on the tribunal.  

Security precautions in Moscow were high following a number of Ukrainian drone attacks earlier in the week which caused massive disruption at airports. Mobile internet had been cut around the parade area to foil further attacks and sniper teams were to be seen from the Kremlin roof and GUM shopping centre, overlooking Red Square. The Kremlin now equates Ukraine to the Nazis of the Second World War.

 

Members of the Chinese army took part in the parade   Ria Novosti Handout

India's Operation Sindoor Against Pakistani Terrorists

"Pakistan and India have enough nuclear weapons to wipe the other side out several times over."

"Their nuclear weapons create a scenario for mutually assured destruction."

"[The arsenals are a defensive move to prevent and deter further fighting, because] neither side can afford to initiate such a war or hope to achieve anything from it."

Syed Mohammed Ali, security analyst, Islamabad, Pakistan 

"Pakistan has every right to give a robust response to this act of war imposed by India, and a strong response is indeed being given."

"[The] heinous act of aggression will not go unpunished".

Pakistan Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif

 

"Missile strikes by India in Pakistan-administered Kashmir targeted at least nine sites] where terrorist attacks against India have been planned."

"[The strikes - named] Operation Sindoor [were part of a] commitment [to hold] accountable [those responsible for the 22 April attack in Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir, which left 25 Indians and one Nepali national dead]."
India Defence Ministry

People inspect a damaged mosque following India's strikes in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir   AFP via Getty Images

"Throughout 2024, violence continued in Kashmir in response to increasing efforts by New Delhi to consolidate territorial control. Attacks specifically targeted Indian travelers and workers in the region. In June 2024, militants opened fire on a bus carrying pilgrims traveling to a Hindu shrine in the town of Reasi. The attack killed nine and injured over thirty. In October, militants killed seven in Kashmir at a construction site for a tunnel project connecting Kashmir to the northern region of Ladakh."

"On April 22, 2025, tensions escalated after militants attacked Indian tourists in Kashmir, killing twenty-five Indian nationals and one Nepalese national. The incident marked the deadliest terrorist attack in Indian territory since the 2008 Mumbai attacks. India blamed Pakistan for harboring the group responsible for the attack and arrested two Pakistani nationals as suspects. Pakistan denied any involvement, and its defense ministry even suggested the attack was a “false flag operation.” Although no group has been officially identified as responsible for the attack, the Kashmir Resistance—an offshoot of LeT—claimed responsibility online."

Global Conflict Tracker

Both India and Pakistan have a stockpile of nuclear weapons, each 'reminding' the other of a guarantee of mutually assured destruction with neither country publicly disclosing their nuclear capabilities. Each is thought to have amassed between 170 and 180 warheads; short-, long- and medium-range. Each country has its own system of delivery to launch and propel their weapons to targets. The arsenals serve as a defense in prevention and deterrence of conflict beyond the conventional. 

 

Each is aware that neither Pakistan nor India could survive a first nuclear strike and be able to retaliate through "second-strike capability"; a sobering perspective for any government. Both lay claim to Kashmir in its entirety. Border skirmishes equate to instability in the region and have for decades. A heavily militarized border divides each country's part of Kashmir where three wars have been fought in the past. Armed insurgents on the Pakistan side of the divide resist Indian rule, with Muslim Kashmiris in support of the goal of uniting Kashmir under Pakistani governance. 

 

The number of border flare-ups and attacks in India's portion of Kashmir, prompted New Delhi toward an increasingly tough position on Islamabad, accusing it of supporting 'terrorism', which more than adequately describes the reality of the situation. India, as the most populous nation on the planet, spent $74.4 billion on defence in the current year; one of the world's largest arms importers.

 

Indian army Trucks on highway leading to Ladakh, Kashmir    Danish Ismail, Reuters

 

Although Pakistan spends a considerable sum -- $10 billion last year -- in arms, India has over double the number of active armed forces personnel than Pakistan. But there is another looming threat that India has that Pakistan doesn't share; its neighbour China, with its aggressive maritime security stance in the Indian Ocean. On occasion both Pakistan and India launch operations into airspace and territories controlled by the other, intended for the most part to damage check-points, installations or sites used by militants. Their lethal antipathy toward one another is religion-driven, not territorial. 

For every step that India takes -- from closing down Pakistan's embassy in India, shutting off a traditional water supply agreement to Pakistan, closing its airspace to air traffic, to targeting sites in Pakistan known to harbour Islamist terrorist groups -- Pakistan follows suit and vows vengeance. Following missile strikes in Punjab province and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, a heavy exchange of fire between the two nations ensued. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif commended his armed forces for shooting down five Indian jets, hit, he claimed after firing their missiles, while still in Indian airspace.

 

Three planes fell onto villages in India-controlled territory, although India made no official comments. During the April attack in Kashmir, some survivors informed Indian media that the gunmen singled out Hindu men and shot them dead at close range. Pakistan stands accused by India of being behind the attack by a new militant group, Kashmir Resistance. India has identified the group with links to Lashkar-e Taiba, a Pakistani militant group long accused by New Delhi of being supported by Pakistan. 

Adnan Abidi, Reuters  An Indian soldier stands guard on a highway in Kashmir

 

Digital Analysis Situation Room and Rapid Response Programming for Israel/Gaza-related Extremism, Hate and Mis/Disinformation in Canada

"Among the top performing tweets about the conflict that were shared among right-wing extremists in Canada in the month after October 7 2023 were posts claiming that Justin Trudeau had directly funded the Hamas attacks through contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees." 

"Several Telegram channels associated with extreme right-wing content creators both hosted antisemitic material and amplified posts from international right-wing extremists and antisemites."

Institute for Strategic Dialogue, London, England

 

"Israel gets attacked, they kill women. children, innocent people, torture them, burning babies and more."

"Israel starts retaliating and Palestinians fill the streets of Toronto with Anti-Jew slogans."

"Canada will soon be unrecognizable and filled with these religious extremists." 

Facebook: Turdeau/Liberals Are Destroying Canada

Muslims pray outside McGill University's Roddick Gate during celebrations marking the first anniversary of the October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel. Photo by John Mahoney / MONTREAL GAZETTE

 

Blacklock's Reporter made public a program funded by the Digital Citizen Contribution Program,  a Liberal fund described as a means toward "countering online disinformation". As part of its presumed mandate the Program contracted with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, for the U.K. company to monitor pro-Israel social media accounts in Canada. And its eventual report went on to frame those pro-Israel accounts as "right-wing extremists", whose motivation was led by "anti-Muslim hatred". 

The viral 'protests' that overtook the streets of Canadian cities and set up encampments on the grounds of Canadian universities, paraded their numbers and keffiyeh-clad members shouting invective at Canadian Jews and the State of Israel, recommending a global 'Intifada', a 'Final Solution', and 'From the River to the Sea', condemning Israel as genocidal, with an intent to annihilate Palestinians from land rightfully belonging to them, and not to Jews as their ancestral heritage geography, denigrating the presence of Jews in Canada. Yet these protests are characterized as peaceful events.

 

The targets of the pro-Palestinian -- Hamas-supporting-and-admiring Palestinian student groups in Canada who faced intimidation and threats in their very neighbourhoods with municipal police agents doing nothing to subdue the situation, or offer protection to Jews, while offering assistance to the civic-disturbing and obviously antisemitic throngs of anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian groups engaging in mass prayer sessions, shutting down highway access in a show of conquest -- were continually warned not to confront their tormentors. And it was the Jews who were ushered away, not those who threatened them.

 

Yet the Jews were the designated 'right-wing' threats to society by the U.K. contractor, and not the illegal actions of their indefatigable persecutors whose threats and implied violence clearly identified them as uncivilized malefactors. A few months following the October 7 massacres of Israelis in southern Israel by Hamas terrorists who rushed across the border in their thousands to wreak bloody havoc, the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau hired the London firm at a cost of $128,258.

 

The project was titled Digital Analysis Situation Room and Rapid Response Programming for Israel/Gaza-related Extremism, Hate and Mis/Disinformation in Canada. What resulted was a series of reports with the claims the Israel-Hamas conflict had caused an inflammation of "extremism, hate and disinformation" among Canadian 'right-wing extremists', exacerbating "online harms" in Canada. "Several influential accounts, particularly on X, have taken a staunch pro-Israeli position since the attacks on October 7", one report warned.

 

The post that was excerpted in one of the reports, posted by Facebook's Turdeau/Liberals Are Destroying Canada, was included as an example of an 'extremist' post that spread disinformation that "policing of protests related to the Israel-Hamas conflict has been inconsistent". Pro-Palestinian 'protest' demonstrations featured calls of "death to Israel", with banners praising "armed resistance". A recognizable pattern of demonstrators celebrating the October 7 massacres in the immediate aftermath and the first anniversary of attacks go unremarked and undenounced; presumably innocent in nature and definitely not 'extreme right-wing'.

 

Palestinian Youth Movement, one of Canada's most prominently active anti-Israel groups held a rally of celebration in "honour [of] the martyrs of the past year". In reference to which the Institute for Strategic Dialogue pointed out the extremist nature of any statement that the demonstrations were "protesting for the death of Jews and Jewish state"; an obviously unforgivable surrender to Islamophobia on the part of Jewish 'extreme right-wing' trouble-makers within society.

 

The Liberal government of Justin Trudeau, renewed Canada's funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, after it was suspended by the previous Conservative government. That funding of UNRWA was renewed again by the Liberal government, irrespective of the proven fact that the agency was forced to dismiss nine staffers on the evidence, for taking part in the October 7 attacks in Israel. That UNRWA confirmed a top Hamas commander killed in Lebanon was one of its employees seemed irrelevant to the Trudeau government.

 

According to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, online posts that sought to link Canada's UNRWA funding with the October 7 attacks represented trafficking in right-wing extremism. "Disinformation" or "misinformation" in the public arena is profoundly disturbing to the Liberal government in Canada. The Online Harms Act, legislation to broaden police powers to punish online speech and preliminary detention of Canadians suspected of posting hateful speech may yet be the future, since Prime Minister Mark Carney appears willing to reconsider its passing.  

"Large American online platforms have become seas of racism, misogyny, antisemitism, Islamophobia and hate in all its forms."

"My government will act."

Prime Minister Mark Carney

Liberal.ca

In Canada, Immigrant and Visible Minority Communities Increasingly Vote Conservative

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre and his wife Anaida wave to the crowd at an election campaign event, in Brampton, Ont., on April 9, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Arlyn McAdorey

"The immigrant community of Canada just blocked the Liberals from forming a majority."

"These new Canadians share our conservative values of hard work and the Canadian dream."

Angelo Isidorou, executive director, B.C. Conservative party 

 

"Immigrant-heavy ridings across the Greater Toronto Area [GTA] have swung from being decisively against to decisively for the provincial Conservatives over these last 30 years. It's part of the trend we're seeing across North America where immigrants and minorities are swinging to the political right; and it's also a story of how one of the GTA's largest constituencies is much more dynamic than we often realize."

"Since the late twentieth century, researchers have noted the changing demographics in Canada's suburbs, particularly in terms of ethnicity and immigrant status."

"In the Greater Toronto Area, the share of immigrants in the inner suburbs [Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough] has grown since the 1970s, and in the outer suburbs [Halton, Peel, York, and Durham] since the 1990s, while declining in the inner city region [City of Toronto] at the same time. Additionally, since immigration reform in 1967 – which abolished race and nationality quotas in favour of a point-based system – immigrants have increasingly been visible minorities."

University of Toronto, School of Cities

"Minority governments will take political sophistication to navigate. It’s about seeing the whole chessboard listening and taking counsel from many people. This will give us a glimpse into whether Carney has the intangible skills that make somebody a durable political leader and able to survive in this environment. Because there’s a question mark over whether he has any interest or is capable of doing this. And not everybody who voted for Carney quite knows what they got."

"Carney could be in a Keir Starmer situation where he’s elected, but it’s a loveless victory and he has a very short window in which to deliver what voters think they should be getting from him."

"If you don’t deliver soon and people began peeling away, it can be really difficult to recover from that. And so in many ways, I think his honeymoon ended the minute he stepped off the stage after giving his victory speech."

Jordan Leichnitz, former senior strategist, New Democratic party

Mark Carney during an election night event at TD Place in Ottawa, Ontario  Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

The immigrant vote played a significant role back in 2006 when the Conservatives under then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper became the government. Jason Kenney, Mr. Harper's then Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, was well recognized for his role in welcoming that demographic into the Conservative fold. That immigrant vote is now recognized as an important factor in Canadian elections, and in this election of April 28, 2025, the immigrant vote that tipped heavily in favour of the Conservatives may very well have denied Mark Carney and his Liberals the majority government they craved.

 

Pre-election polls identified the immigrant vote as favouring the Conservatives, and that tendency has increased as well, since 2021. The Economist published an analysis finding that among the 31 Toronto-area ridings with a population averaging 40 percent immigrants, experienced for the most part a significant shift to the Conservatives, over their preference in the 2021 federal election. Whereas in ridings with fewer new Canadians, the tendency was for the Liberals to pick up support.

 

The Economist analysis pointed out that under the surface Canada had undergone an electoral realignment reflective of the United States. "Just as in the United States, working-class and immigrant voters swung right", concluded the publication. In the October British Columbia election, non-white voters; Black, East Asian, Latino, Middle Eastern or South Asian tended to prefer the B.C. Conservatives.

 

A Reddit map of 2025 Liberal-Conservative vote patterns making the rounds indicated that the more immigrant and non-white a riding, the harder their shift to the Conservatives.  A survey by Innovative Research Group noted that Chinese-Canadians in British Columbia emerged far more Conservative than average; this support almost entirely concentrated among first-generation immigrants. Where new immigrants fell below the national average, a Liberal vote emerged.

 

A Nanos poll post-election found as well that 41 percent of Canadians under age 34 tended to vote Conservative; while 32 percent voted Liberal. In the over-55 cohort, Liberals dominated at 52 percent as opposed to 34 percent for the Conservatives.  For the first time in Canadian voting history, the average 25-year-old Canadian was likelier to vote Conservative than the average 65-year-old. The average immigrant was likelier to vote Conservative than the average native-born Canadian.

 

Liberal social policies, including harm reduction, repeat bail for chronic offenders and lax integration of other immigrants has seen new Canadians emerge as opponents of these policies. Conservatives "maintained their base and grew it", pointed out Abacus Data's David Coletto. "South Asian and Chinese-Canadians in the grater Toronto area voted for the cultural conservatism" the Conservative Party represented. "They value family, faith, entrepreneurship and community order. For many, the Liberals' progressive stances on gender, parental rights, and criminal justice reform felt out of touch."

"Traditionally, immigrant and visible minority communities have supported the centrist Liberal Party. In the Greater Toronto Area [GTA], where over half of all residents identify as “visible minority” [the category used by StatCan], Chinese and South Asian Canadians have long formed a key part of the Liberal base."

"Yet recent polling tells a different story. An October 2024 survey found that 45 per cent of immigrants had changed their political allegiances since arriving in Canada, with many now leaning Conservative."

"Meanwhile, another national survey from January 2025 found that a majority of East Asian [55 per cent] and South Asian [56 per cent] respondents expressed support for the Conservative Party, far outpacing support for the Liberals or the NDP."

The Conversation 

Photograph: Getty Images