Thursday, March 13, 2025

News roundup, 13 March 2025

- Russian forces have recaptured most of the Kursk region seized by Ukraine last year as a bargaining chip. There are suggestions that the Trump regime's move to suspend intelligence sharing with Ukraine may have been a factor.

- Shelly Glover, who ran for the leadership of the Manitoba PCs in 2021, is looking at launching a new rightwing party on the assumption that the Tory brand is too badly tainted by the refusal to search the landfill. Glover says she cancelled her party membership after the party ran ads campaigning on said refusal. Whatever else one can conclude from this, it's certainly not going to hurt the NDP's prospects.

- A lobby group called the "Freedom Cities Coalition", backed by billionaire techbros, is calling on the Trump regime to create new special development zones where they could build corporate run cities that aren't bound by the usual rules governing municipalities. One of the stated reasons is so that they can develop new technologies without regulatory oversight. That does not sound like a good idea.

- US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says that Trump's proposed annexation of Canada will not be a topic of discussion at the upcoming G7 summit. It's kind of telling how he thinks it's entirely up to the US what will be discussed there, especially since they aren't even hosting the summit.

- Canadians continue to cancel vacation plans in the US in large numbers. Provincial tourism boards are hoping to capitalize on this by getting people to travel within the country. The boycott movement is also spreading to Europe, where both individuals and businesses are getting on board.

- Canadian intelligence agencies are taking the danger of US interference seriously. It's no great secret that the Americans have destabilized countries before, and the rise of social media has added a dangerous new dimension to this.

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