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Canada’s Contribution to Bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki

Eighty years ago today the US Air Force dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima resulting in 140,000 deaths. Three days later they dropped a different type of nuclear weapon on another Japanese city. 40,000 were killed immediately in Nagasaki and tens of thousands more died in the aftermath.

Those who justify the bombings claim it saved US lives by quickly ending the war. But, Tokyo had already been devastated and had delivered multiple pleas for a surrender agreement. The bombings were largely a warning to the Soviet Union about US military capabilities amidst post-war negotiations.

Canada was not an innocent bystander in the nuclear bombing. Uranium from Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories was used in the bombs and Canada spent millions of dollars (tens of millions in today’s money) to help research the bombs’ development. Immediately after successfully developing the technology, the US submitted its proposal to drop the bomb on Japan to the tri-state World War II Combined Policy Committee meeting, which included powerful Canadian minister C.D. Howe and a British official. Apparently, Howe supported the US proposal. When the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Howe immediately praised the military action. “It is a distinct pleasure for me to announce that Canadian scientists have played an intimate part, and have been associated in an effective way with this great scientific development,” he told the press. (Reflecting the racism in Canadian governing circles, in his (uncensored) diary King wrote: “It is fortunate that the use of the bomb should have been upon the Japanese rather than upon the white races of Europe.”)

Only a few years after the first atomic bomb was built Ottawa allowed the US to station nuclear weapons in Canada. According to John Clearwater in Canadian Nuclear Weapons: The Untold Story of Canada’s Cold War Arsenal, the first “nuclear weapons came to Canada as early as September 1950, when the USAF [US Air Force] temporarily stationed eleven ‘Fat Man’- style atomic bombs at Goose Bay Newfoundland.”

Canadian territory has also been used to test US nuclear weapons. Beginning in 1952 Ottawa agreed to let the US Strategic Air Command use Canadian air space for training flights of nuclear-armed aircraft. At the same time, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission conducted military tests in Canada to circumvent oversight by American “watchdog committees.” As part of the agreement Ottawa committed to prevent any investigation into the military aspects of nuclear research in Canada.

Canadian Forces also carried nukes on foreign-stationed aircraft. At the height of Canadian nuclear deployments in the late 1960s the government had between 250 and 450 atomic bombs at its disposal in Europe. Based in Germany, the CF-104 Starfighter, for instance, operated without a gun and carried nothing but a thermal nuclear weapon.

During the past 80 years Canada has often been the world’s largest producer of uranium. Ottawa has sold dozens of nuclear reactors to foreign countries, which have often been financed with aid dollars.

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Heavy Machinery and Patriotic Demolition in the Service of Genocide

Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv is a well-respected holy man in Israel with some devoted followers. He is a dayan, a judge in the rabbinical courts of Tel Aviv, dispensing wisdom in matters of religion and Jewish law. He’s also a reservist in the Seyeret Givati brigade of the IDF and is currently serving in Gaza. There, he has earned a degree of fame for his skills as an operator of the Caterpillar D9 armored bulldozer, the IDF’s tool of choice for the erasure of Palestinian homes. He claims to average more than 50 demolitions a week. According to Zarbiv, his unit has learned to ‘play the D9’ like a musical instrument. 

Rabbi Zarbiv is part of the wider effort to lay waste to Gaza and render it uninhabitable for Palestinians. His stated motives are religious; war, for him, is a harbinger of the coming of the messiah. But he is one of many directly or indirectly employed to demolish buildings in Gaza. The motivation for others is more straightforward: money, revenge or, in a context where the demolition of Palestinians’ homes is seen as a service to one’s country, patriotic duty.

Domicide is a key aspect of the genocide in Gaza. According to recent reports, around 92% of homes and 70% of all buildings in the Gaza Strip have been severely damaged or destroyed. Gaza has a population of over 2 million and from the scale of the destruction, it appears that all houses are considered bases of resistance. If we put morality aside, as the IDF seems to have done, the scale of the flattening of Gaza is an impressive achievement, considered as an initial stage of population transfer. There is no access given to foreign journalists for a reason – Gaza is unrecognizable, the destruction wholesale. So, how do you transform such a vast area into a moonscape of concrete and ashes in under two years? Overwhelming air power certainly helps, but on the ground, two things have been particularly important: willing personnel, such as the good rabbi, and the right equipment.

It takes certain modifications for a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer manufactured in the US to become an armored D9. Israel Aerospace Industries [IAI], which offers an ‘extensive range of innovative solutions’ in ground combat situations, is responsible for these. The Israeli armored version of the Cat D9 has a mounted machine gun, grenade launcher and smoke projector. It is armoured to protect the operator and has, of course, been battle-tested over years of occupation. So familiar an asset is it, that the D9 has its own affectionate nickname in IDF slang: the ‘Doobie’, or Teddy Bear in English. Rachel Corrie died underneath one. Together with excavators, wheel loaders and other heavy machinery, it has been used for years in West Bank house demolitions. The D9 can not only demolish buildings but create the new ‘corridors’ of Gaza and clear border security zones. It has hardly been reported in the West but, with the aid of such equipment, whole villages in southern Lebanon along the international border have recently been erased, Gaza style.  

In wartime, the Israeli economy has been strikingly robust. The assault on Gaza has been a boost to certain sectors, and it has been especially profitable for those with initiative who can hire or invest in large machinery. As well as utilizing its own personnel for demolitions, the IDF has been shown to be outsourcing the destruction in Gaza. Lucrative work has been available for equipment operators. Owners of excavators can earn 5,000 shekels a day. Those who work as contractors with the Ministry of Defence are paid per number of houses demolished. This is war as a continuation of business by other means, as Brecht might have observed. Rabbi Zarbiv is merely the celebrity face of patriotic demolition. So many are working on the razing of Gaza that infrastructure projects in Israel are facing significant delays due to shortages of operators and equipment.

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How To Make America Great Again

Donald Trump and his supporters were certain that by restoring him to the presidency, they could make America great again. They are going to be as sorely disappointed at the end of Trump’s term in office as they were after his first term in office. Trump will not make America great again.

The problem, however, is not Donald Trump. The fact is that no one can make America great again — at least not if America maintains the same political and economic systems that have characterized our nation for almost 100 years. It is those systems that constitute an insurmountable obstacle to making America great again, no matter who is elected president.

Unfortunately, however, conservative Americans are not ready to accept that. They are convinced that by electing Trump and then vesting him with unchecked, omnipotent power, he will be the “man on the white horse” who will make America great again.

It won’t happen. At the end of this road to national “greatness” lies an increasingly weakened, dysfunctional society — one in which liberty and privacy have been destroyed — one in which the American people will be existing as subservient, dependent, and fearful serfs whose purpose in life is simply to serve the state and the greater good of society.

There is one — and only one — way for America to be great again. That way is to restore the sound, founding principles of liberty of our nation and then build on them.

Obviously, this entails deep soul-searching of how we started as a nation and how we ended up where we are today. It also requires Americans to think at a higher level — one that involves principles and ideals. Let’s examine what needs to be done to restore greatness to our land.

The national-security state

America’s founding political system was a limited-government republic, one that was characterized by three separate and independent branches, with a very small military force falling under the control of the executive branch. The Constitution, which called the federal government into existence, prohibited the government from killing people without “due process of law,” a term that encompasses notice of charges and a hearing or trial where the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused has committed some crime. The Bill of Rights guaranteed that the accused had the right to trial by a jury composed at random from regular citizens in the community. The Bill of Rights also prohibited the imposition of cruel and unusual punishments.

All that changed in the late 1940s, when the federal government was converted into what is called a national-security state. It effectively involved a fourth branch of government consisting of the Pentagon, a vast and powerful military establishment, an empire of domestic and foreign military bases, the CIA, the NSA, and, to a certain extent, the FBI.

Although this conversion took place without a constitutional amendment, it constituted the most radical change in America’s political system in the history of the country. Over time, the national-security branch became the most powerful branch — the branch to which the other three branches defer, especially in foreign affairs.

Moreover, the constitutional limitations on the power of the federal government disintegrated with the conversion to a national-security state. The Pentagon and the CIA now wielded the power to engage in state-sponsored assassinations, thereby nullifying the constitutional prohibition against killing people without due process of law. They also wielded the power to inflict cruel and unusual punishments on people, including torture. They also now had the power to keep people incarcerated for as long as they wanted, ignoring the constitutional prohibition against indefinite incarceration without trial. They also wielded the power to engage in mass secret surveillance, especially through the NSA. Moreover, once U.S. officials launched their “war on terrorism” after the 9/11 attacks, the Pentagon and the CIA wielded the power to nullify the right of trial by jury and employ trial by military tribunal instead.

It is worth mentioning that all of these omnipotent, dark-side powers apply not just to foreigners but also to American citizens. The fact is that Americans now live under a national-security state system in which their very own government wields the power to assassinate, torture, surveil, and indefinitely detain them. What makes the whole thing so perverse is that Americans have been indoctrinated into believing that all this tyranny is “freedom.”

It’s also worth mentioning that the conversion to a national-security state was accompanied by a foreign policy of foreign wars and interventions, as well as an empire of foreign military bases, which have been used to inflict massive death and destruction on people in foreign lands.

There is one solution to all this: Dismantle the national-security state and restore America’s founding system of a limited-government republic, with just a relatively small, basic military force — one that lacks the capability to engage in foreign wars, interventions, coups, and wars of aggression.

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Nearly 10,000 Killed In Syria Since ‘Diversity-Friendly Jihadists’ Seized Power

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has documented the violent deaths of nearly 10,000 people in Syria since the former ISIS commander, Ahmad al-Sharaa, was installed in power in Damascus.  

After Sharaa toppled the government of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in December last year, he was widely praised. An article in the UK’s Telegraph described his armed group, the former Al-Qaeda affiliated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), as “diversity friendly jihadists”

Since that time, his HTS-led security forces have gone on a killing spree targeting Syria’s minority groups.

SOHR reported on 7 August that “due to ongoing violence and violations by local and foreign actors, coupled with widespread security chaos,” at least 9,889 people have been killed since 8 December 2024, the day Damascus fell.

The SORH said that 7,449 civilians were among the victims, including 396 children and 541 women.

It also stressed that there has been no accountability for killings carried out by members of Syria’s security forces and affiliated armed factions, while “in some cases, perpetrators are being covered up and facts are being distorted.”

The SOHR noted, for example, that the fact-finding committee formed to investigate the massacre of roughly 1,600 Alawite civilians in Syria’s coastal regions in March “did not provide results consistent with the facts,” and was released while government forces and affiliated factions were carrying out new massacres of Druze civilians in Suwayda.

At the same time, pro-government media have launched campaigns aimed at undermining any groups seeking to document or expose the human rights violations, including by “disseminating sectarian and inflammatory rhetoric” against specific religious minority groups.

For example, media campaigns have been launched to deflect from the massacres by calling Alawites “remnants of the regime” of Bashar al-Assad, calling the Druze “collaborators” with Israel, and calling the Kurds “separatists.”

In many videos posted online, Syrian government-affiliated fighters regularly refer to both Alawites and Druze as “pigs” before executing them in their homes and the street.

The SOHR stated as well that thousands of detainees – who have not had a proper trial or been allowed to appear before a judge – remain in prison.

Among the detainees are people arrested after the fall of Assad, and others who were arrested during raids or at security checkpoints. Many of these detainees have no clear charges against them and are being arbitrarily detained without due process, SOHR added.

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The Sad, Pathetic End of Howard Stern

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

A big, explosive controversy that’s impossible to ignore! A jaw-dropping confession that outraged his corporate bosses! Or maybe he’d finally suffer the consequences of speaking “truth to power” — and pay the ultimate price for refusing to back down!

That’s how “The Howard Stern Show” was supposed to end.

This November marks the 100th anniversary of TS Eliot’s haunting poem, “The Hollow Men.” It’s a telling coincidence, for it foretold not just the fate of the world, but of a certain shock-jock: “This is the way the [Howard Stern Show] ends; Now with a bang but a whimper.”

But calling it a whimper would be an overstatement. It was more of a “tree falling in a forest when no one’s around” situation, because Howard Stern’s audience abandoned him years ago: “Stern’s program has fluctuated from 20 million daily to just 125,000 of late.”

That’s an astonishing fall from grace. There are, quite literally, thousands of nameless, faceless YouTubers, TikTokers, X posters, and “influencers” with far larger audiences than the one-time “King of All Media.” During his heyday, 20 million Americans famously listened to Howard Stern to “see what he says next”.

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Report: Fairfax County Public Schools Investigates Claims Staff Arranged Students’ Abortions Without Parents’ Knowledge

Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) in Virginia has opened an investigation into allegations school staff arranged abortions for students without parental notification and consent.

The investigation is based on claims from a report that school officials at Centreville High School in Union Hill arranged and paid for students’ abortions in 2021, including a 17-year-old girl, local news outlet WJLA reported.

“We learned yesterday of these concerning allegations from 2021,” FCPS told the outlet in a statement on Wednesday. “We are launching an immediate and comprehensive investigation as we take all concerns of student wellbeing very seriously.”

FCPS said “not to [our] knowledge” when the outlet pressed as whether staff have ever arranged abortions for students.

“We have launched an immediate investigation into these concerns as soon as we were made aware,” the district added.  

The district has a policy stating that ““every effort shall be made to encourage and support students suspecting pregnancy to discuss their concerns with their parents or guardians.” The policy does not require staff to tell parents, but it states: “In no case shall personnel commit themselves to maintain such information confidentially, keeping it from parents, guardians, or appropriate school authorities.”

The district told the outlet that district employees do not arrange abortions for FCPS students who are minors. When asked if FCPS employees inform students about abortions and where to get them, the district did not directly answer. 

“Students are referred to the public health nurse for any health-related matters. The public health nurses are Fairfax County Health Department employees,” the district told the outlet. 

Virginia state law requires parental consent and notification before a minor can obtain an abortion. 

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Moscow flexes military muscle: Russia’s Oreshnik hypersonic missile strikes fear across NATO bloc and Ukraine

  • Russia’s Oreshnik hypersonic missile poses an unprecedented challenge to NATO, capable of speeds exceeding Mach 10 and carrying multiple independently targetable warheads, making existing air defenses obsolete.
  • The missile’s kinetic energy alone causes devastating damage, likened to a nuclear blast even with conventional payloads. Its ability to strike six targets simultaneously and penetrate bunkers forces a drastic shift in military calculations.
  • The missile’s deployment has rattled Europe, with warnings it could hit Brussels in 17 minutes and Polish bases in 11 minutes – pressuring NATO and amplifying fears of escalation. Some European leaders may seek diplomatic offramps rather than confrontation.
  • The Oreshnik’s dual conventional/nuclear payload capability blurs retaliation thresholds, aligning with Putin’s escalation doctrine. Russian officials explicitly warn NATO of “catastrophic damage” within minutes if countered.
  • Plans to supply Belarus with Oreshniks signal Russia’s readiness for long-term confrontation, leaving NATO to reassess deterrence strategies against Moscow’s solidified hypersonic advantage. Diplomatic solutions may dwindle as military threats intensify.

Russia’s recent deployment of its advanced Oreshnik hypersonic missile has sent shockwaves across the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bloc and Ukraine, raising fears of an irreversible shift in the balance of power.

The weapon is capable of reaching speeds exceeding Mach 10 and carrying multiple independently targetable warheads. It poses an unprecedented challenge to existing air defenses and signals Moscow’s willingness to escalate tensions with the West.

The Oreshnik (Russian for “hazelnut tree”), first tested in a devastating Nov. 21, 2024 strike on Ukraine’s Yuzhmash defense facility in Dnipro, represents a technological leap in warfare. Russian President Vladimir Putin lauded the missile’s unparalleled capabilities in a televised address, describing it as immune to interception and capable of delivering strikes comparable to a nuclear blast – even with conventional payloads.

Putin declared that the missile flies to its target at Mach 10 “like a meteorite.” It inflicts such damage that it could be likened to the use of strategic nuclear weapons. (Related: Putin’s “unstoppable” Oreshnik missile: A dangerous gamble or empty threat?)

Footage of the Dnipro attack showed six plasma-engulfed warheads slamming into the ground in seconds, their kinetic energy alone wreaking havoc. Ukrainian intelligence confirmed the missile carried 36 submunitions, designed to obliterate hardened targets – even deep underground bunkers.

Former U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) analyst Michael Maloof told RT that the Oreshnik fundamentally alters the military calculus: “There’s no defense against that. It absolutely shifts the balance of power overwhelmingly in favor of Russia.”

The U.S. lacks operational hypersonic missile defenses, leaving Ukraine and NATO exposed to potential strikes with mere minutes of warning. Given this, the Oreshnik’s debut has exacerbated Europe’s anxieties about entanglement in the Ukraine war.

Jim Townsend, a former U.S. defense official, noted in Foreign Policy that EU nations are “not ready for war over Ukraine” and were rattled by the Oreshnik test. Some European leaders, he suggested, might welcome a Trump-mediated peace deal to avoid further military spending and escalation.

Russian officials have not shied away from leveraging the missile’s psychological impact. Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, warned NATO capitals that Oreshnik strikes could deliver “catastrophic damage” within minutes.

“Bomb shelters will not save you,” added Medvedev, who served as Russian president between 2008 and 2012. State media amplified the threat, boasting the missile could hit Brussels in 17 minutes and Polish airbases in 11.

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Ernst Presses DOT to Reclaim $14 Billion from Overbudget Rail Projects After Audit

Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) announced a new push to rescind or redirect $14 billion in federal transportation funding from what she calls “boondoggle” rail projects that are years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget, according to a letter sent this week to Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy.

In the letter, Ernst commended Secretary Duffy for releasing a long-delayed audit of California’s high-speed rail project and for canceling $4 billion in federal funding for the effort. The Department of Transportation’s 315-page report, required by a provision Ernst authored in the bipartisan infrastructure law (Section 11319 of Public Law 117-58), outlined what Ernst called a “trail of project delays, mismanagement, waste, and skyrocketing costs.”

DOT found that the California high-speed rail project failed to meet the terms of its federal grant awards, citing missed deadlines, budget shortfalls, and exaggerated ridership projections. The project, originally pitched to voters in 2008 as a $33 billion rail line connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles by 2020, has since ballooned to $128 billion with no high-speed tracks laid.

Ernst praised DOT’s review as setting “a new gold standard in accountability” and urged Secretary Duffy to apply similar scrutiny to other federally funded projects identified under her boondoggle law. She listed four projects currently receiving a combined $4.5 billion from taxpayers: Honolulu Rail Transit in Hawaii at $1,941,400,000; the Purple Line Transit in Maryland at $1,006,000,000; the Transbay Corridor Core Capacity project in California at $1,335,730,000; and the Queens Railroad Project in New York at $294,781,579.

The letter also highlighted three additional projects that Ernst said were omitted from the official audit despite being over budget and behind schedule. These include the Subway Extension to Silicon Valley, California, receiving over $5 billion; the San Francisco Transit Center at $3.38 billion; and the Minneapolis Light Rail project in Minnesota at roughly $939 million. According to Ernst, the Department of Transportation has committed $9.4 billion to these three projects alone.

“If these can’t be salvaged with better management, they too should be canceled,” Ernst wrote. She suggested that the total $14 billion could be redirected to higher-priority infrastructure needs or used to help pay down the national debt, which she noted has surpassed $37 trillion.

Although the audit of California’s high-speed rail project was over 300 pages long, Ernst noted that the DOT’s summary of the other 14 projects required by her provision was condensed into a one-page chart. She called for greater detail in future “boondoggle reports,” including information on budget overruns, schedule delays, and additional DOD-supported transportation efforts.

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NATO Member Scrambles Jets As Russia Destroys Gas Facility Key To Imports From US, Azerbaijan

Russia carried out an overnight drone strike on a crucial gas pumping and metering facility in Ukraine, triggering a large fire at the site, Ukrainian officials reported Wednesday. Importantly the station is part of an LNG imports scheme from the US and Azerbaijan. According to Ukraine’s energy ministry, a wave of drones targeted a metering station located near the Romania-Ukraine border, identified as part of the Transbalkan pipeline system.

NATO member Romania scrambled fighter jets in response to the large attack right on its border, Fox News reports:

Romania was forced to scramble F-16 jets after Russia carried out a strike just half a mile from the NATO nation’s territory. The country’s Ministry of National Defense (MApN) confirmed in a post on X that Russia carried out a drone attack near its border.

“On the night of August 5-6, the Russian forces launched a massive drone attack on the civilian infrastructure in the Ismail area, Ukraine, in the vicinity of the border with Romania,” Romania’s defense ministry wrote in a post on X.

“The radar systems of the MApN detected air targets in Ukrainian space, close to Tulcea County. At 1:10a.m., the population in the north of the county was warned via RO-Alert,” the ministry added, in reference to Romania’s official emergency warning system.

According to more details via Fox:

The defense ministry stated that two F-16 fighter jets took off “to monitor the national airspace,” but no “unauthorized intrusions” were detected. The ministry said it would carry out checks in the area and keep NATO allies updated in real time.

The drones reportedly struck oil and gas pipelines at the Orlivka plant in Odesa, Ukraine. Bright orange flames and plumes of smoke were visible across the Danube River.

Russia’s defense ministry acknowledged the intentional attack on Ukraine’s gas infrastructure, coming amid a renewed exchange of attacks by both Russia and Ukraine on energy and transport sites generally. So after six months, even the so-called ‘energy ceasefire’ is clearly off.

Ukraine is busy making great efforts to stockpile gas ahead of what’s typically a brutally cold winter season. President Zelensky called it deliberate in terms of timing.

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Netanyahu: Israel Will Seize Full Control of Gaza, Defeat Hamas, Transfer Territory to Arab Governance

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Thursday that Israel “intends to” take full control of the entire Gaza Strip to eliminate Hamas and transfer authority to non-hostile Arab forces, outlining his most comprehensive vision yet for ending the war as his security cabinet met to approve the operation.

Speaking to Fox News host Bill Hemmer ahead of the critical security cabinet meeting, Netanyahu laid out his vision for completely dismantling Hamas rule and transferring Gaza to new leadership.

“We have three missions: One, to eliminate Hamas as a governing and military power in Gaza, otherwise there’s no future for anyone and we will have many more kidnappings and hostages,” Netanyahu declared. “Second, achieve the liberation of all of our hostages. And third, make sure that Gaza doesn’t pose a threat to Israel again.”

The prime minister emphasized that Israel’s goal is liberation, not occupation. “We don’t want to keep it; we want to have a security perimeter,” he said when asked about seizing control of the entire 26-mile Gaza Strip. “We don’t want to govern it. We don’t want to be there as a governing body. We want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly without threatening us, and give Gazans a good life.”

Netanyahu framed the military operation as a rescue mission for both Israelis and Palestinians. “We want to liberate ourselves, liberate the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas,” he stated, describing Hamas as holding “two million Palestinian and Gazan hostages” under their tyrannical rule.

The prime minister forcefully defended Israel’s military tactics against international criticism, particularly charges of genocide. “If we are practicing genocide, we sure would be doing a very bad job of it,” Netanyahu said, citing Ambassador Mike Huckabee’s recent comments. “Because we could have basically eliminated the entire population of Gaza, but we went in the other direction.”

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