Democrats must show courage like the foriegn leaders speaking truth to power from Canada, Mexico, Greenland and others

US congresswoman Democrat Jasmine Crockett- Texas CD30  ‘rooting’ for Canada and Mexico against Trump’s threats, says it is ‘really wild’ that  foreign leaders are speaking truth to power.

Echo report published in The Guardian.

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“They are really the ones that are speaking truth to power right now,” the Democratic representative from Texas said on Friday on the popular Breakfast Club podcast, alluding to the political feuds Trump has engaged in with the US’s two North American neighbors during the first month of his second presidency. “They can see what it is and they were like, ‘We are not messing with this crazy regime.’”

Crockett’s remarks came a day after the Canadian  prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, each aimed verbal rebukes at threats from Trump to challenge both of their countries’ self-rule.

“With Mexico, it is collaboration and coordination, never subordination or interventionism,” Sheinbaum also said. “The Mexican people will under no circumstances accept … intrusions or any other action from abroad that is detrimental to the integrity, independence or sovereignty of the nation.”

Meanwhile, after Trump placed a telephone call to a US hockey team on Thursday that went on to lose a tournament final to a selection of players from Canada, which he has repeatedly boasted about taking over and making his nation’s 51st state, Trudeau wrote on social media: “You can’t take our country – and you can’t take our game.”

Both Sheinbaum and Trudeau’s governments have also grappled with threats of steep trade tariffs from Trump’s administration. And, among other maneuvers, Trump unilaterally ordered that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed the Gulf of America while seeking administrative retribution against the Associated Press for not changing its style to comply with that directive. Sheinbaum, for her part, threatened the creators of Google Maps with a lawsuit after they caved to Trump and renamed the international waters in the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

Crockett attributed her stance on Trump’s feuds with Canada and Mexico to those who voted for him in November’s election despite his being convicted in New York state months earlier on 34 felony charges.

Those charges involved hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels right before the Republican’s victory in the 2016, presidential election. He avoided substantial punishment for his conviction in that case by defeating then vice-president Kamala Harris in the fall to retake the Oval Office after losing it to Joe Biden in 2020.

“Y’all knew who he was when y’all elected him, so don’t act surprised,” Crockett, 43, said of Trump, who is 78. “You elected somebody who was actually convicted by a jury of his peers of 34 felony [counts].

“I … got no convictions, no arrests, no nothing. And I would never be qualified for president in this country in the eyes of the vast majority of them,” Crockett said.

Crockett then invoked other unresolved criminal prosecutions stemming from Trump’s alleged improper retention of government secrets after his presidency as well as his supporters’ attack on the US Capitol in early 2021 that were doomed when he won against Harris.

“But a guy who literally not only ended up becoming a convicted felon [and] also had other cases that were pending … oh yeah – he’s good to go,” she said.

Crockett is a progressive who has been representing a Dallas-based congressional district since early 2023. Early in February, she was among about a dozen Democratic lawmakers who joined hundreds of demonstrators to protest against Trump’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and its access to federal financial systems that process trillions of dollars in annual transactions.

“We are not going to sit around while you go and desecrate our constitution,” Crockett said while addressing the crowd that day. “We are going to be in your face and on your asses.”

Despite Crockett’s address, most Democrats don’t trust those in Congress to offer much resistance to Trump, according to a SurveyUSA poll of more than 1,700 registered voters that was published on Wednesday.😟😢

Yemen and Donald Trump's deteriorating intellectual capacity

An echo opinion point of view by Ambassador Dan Simpson the former ambassador to Yemen published in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette:

Twelve devastating photographs that show what's happening in Yemen published by Huffington Post.

Yemen devastation

I don’t care what Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates may have done for Donald J. Trump or Israel; this time, what the Saudis are doing in Yemen, is way beyond what the United States should tolerate.

The two Sunni Muslim states have, first, added U.S. 9/​11-vintage enemy al-Qaida to their and our allies in the war in Yemen, putting us and the terrorists who attacked us at home on the same side in the war against the Shiite Houthis there. 

Moreover, the war in Yemen has basically nothing to do with us in any case. Second, the Saudis and their allies carried out yet another brutal air attack in Saada in the north of Yemen on Aug. 9 that killed among others at least 29 children in a school bus in a marketplace.

On top of all that, because the Canadians criticized the Saudi government for having locked up two members of its nonviolent opposition, Raif and Samar Badari, the Saudi government kicked out the Canadian ambassador, Dennis Horak, withdrew the Saudi ambassador from Ottawa, and decreed that there would be no more Saudi business or investment relations with Canada, consistently America’s No. 1 ally. In response to this development, the United States has so far taken a position between the two countries morally comparable to Mr. Trump’s neutral reaction to last year’s Charlottesville confrontation between America’s extreme right and counter protesters.

Continued U.S. collaboration with the two Sunni Muslim states, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, in what is essentially an Islamic religious war between Sunnis and Shiites, may have already crossed the line into American participation in war crimes. The latest massacre of children in Saada must be put alongside previous Saudi and Emirates’ bombing of civilian facilities in Yemen, including hospitals, clinics and schools. The United States is directly complicit in the air attacks. We sold them the planes, provide maintenance, spare parts and munitions, and may even have pilots and co-pilots in the cockpits. The United States also has forces fighting on the ground in Yemen, alongside UAE and, astonishingly, al-Qaida forces who are fighting against the Yemeni Houthis.

The war in its humanitarian impact has made upward to 80 percent of the 29 million Yemenis dependent on foreign food aid to avoid starvation.

The Houthis, no angels themselves, are backed by Iran. The Saudis argue that the Houthis are firing Iranian-provided rockets across the Yemen-Saudi Arabia border into the Sunni kingdom. A United Nations envoy, Martin Griffiths, is trying to get the Sunni and Shiite sides to stop fighting and is seeking to schedule a meeting in Switzerland for September.

The Yemen civil war, now having been waged for more than three years, is an outgrowth of long-standing internal Yemeni quarrels and is also in part a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran for dominance in the Middle East. The Israelis favor the Saudis and the Sunnis in general, who, in spite of the fact that most Palestinians are Sunni, have found the Saudis, especially under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to be much less challenging to them than the Iranians, even though at one time the Middle East lined up as Israelis and Persians opposed to Arabs.

Yemen, the poorest of the Arab states, although Syria is comparably ravaged now, has been a scene of conflict for many years. At one time it was two states. The British, trying to hold on in the Middle East, fought Egyptian-backed Yemenis there at one point. The Sunni-Shiite schism is one fault line in the place, although not the only one.

The best thing that could happen at this point is that, starting with the United States, now, all foreign players walk off the bloody field of play, leaving it to the Yemenis themselves to work it out. Nobody, starting with the U.S., helps the Yemenis or themselves by remaining engaged.

Saudi Arabia, in spite of its brave new world of women drivers and the crown prince, will only get itself into deeper trouble by continuing a war it cannot win, even with U.S. and Israeli help. Eventually the Iranians and the Houthis will take the Yemeni conflict deeper into the archaic monarchy, inevitably revealing its fragility and vulnerability in the 21st century.

Iran definitely has other fish to fry. Its economy is shaky. Israel is still busily trying to egg on the United States to attack Iran. Its economic problems, accentuated by Mr. Trump’s having withdrawn the United States from the agreement with China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom, are producing conflict between its reasonable president, Hassan Rouhani, and its more extreme supreme leader, Ali Khamanei.

The UAE will drop out if Saudi Arabia and the United States walk away. Russia doesn’t care much and is still licking its wounds from the expensive Syrian conflict. Israel is too far away to play in Yemen directly, independently or decisively.

As far as America is concerned, bombing a busload of children in cooperation with Saudi Arabia and fighting on the same side as al-Qaida, the Saudis’ ally, our 9/​11 attacker, requires a greater lack of principles than the majority of Americans can muster. As far as staying neutral between Canada and Saudi Arabia because Mr. Trump prefers Crown Prince Mohammed to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, that position is way beyond silly, suggesting, instead, deteriorating intellectual capacity on his part.

Dan Simpson, a former U.S. ambassador, is a columnist for the Post-Gazette (dhsimpson999@gmail.com).

Will Canada become European? Accepts Syrian refugees

Many fearful Americans are supporting an extremist position about making Syrian refugee immigrataions into the US even more onerous than it is already. Yet, our friendly Canada neighbors are moving forward with accepting 25,000 of them.  

Eventually, as Canada accepts the refugees from Europe, the numbers will impact the nation's North American culture. 

Moreover, nothing will prevent Canada's good Syrian citizens from entering the US, after they becine naturalized Canadian citizens! 

In the absence of evidence about Syrian involvement in the November 13th attacks on innocent people enjoying a Friday evening in Paris, the possibility of a terrorism connection has fueled American right wing extremism against allowing desperate refugees, who are fleeing the evil Assad regime, from entering the US. 

On the other hand, Canada is supporting the refugees, by allowing them to enter without unusually special considerations. Is it possible the Canadians' welcoming culture will align North Americans with Europe? Afterall, Iceland is located in the North Atlantic and is already European. Canada could conceivably become the fiscally solvent alternative to Greece in the European Union. Couldn't it?

Scott Simon's Weekend Edition on National Public Radio aired this report about the Canadians:

Syrian refugees in Vancouver, Canada report on NPR Weekend Edition

Mohammed Alsaleh came to Canada a year ago, after being tortured in Syria by the regime of President Bashar Assad. 

Now, the 26-year-old sits in a Starbucks in Vancouver, dressed in blue scrubs from his nurse's aid training and he recalls the shock of arriving in this peaceful, rainy city.

"I was saying to myself, 'What did I do?' " he laughs.

The newly elected liberal government in Ottawa is pushing ahead with a plan to let 25,000 Syrians into Canada by the end of the year — a stark contrast to the U.S., where the past week has seen Congress and governors, mostly Republicans, opposing the arrival of Syrian refugees.

When he first arrived in Canada, though, Alsaleh didn't know a single person in the whole country. He wondered how he'd survive, being so alone."

But that changed the next day," Alsaleh says. "The Canadians, I can tell you, they are the most friendly population in the whole earth."

Canada is generous with its refugees, offering free medical care, subsidized language classes and stipends. When they arrive in Vancouver the first stop for refugees after the airport is at the "Welcome Center" — a lobby in a special hostel for refugees downtown.

Pretty soon, this room is going to get a lot more crowded.

"We're talking about 25,000 refugees coming to Canada in a matter of weeks," says Chris Friesen, of the Immigration Services Society of British Columbia. 

His organization alone will go from processing 900 refugees a year to maybe 3,000 — just in the next six weeks.

He's scrambling to find places for all of these people to sleep.

"We've developed — you know, it's sort of like the Air-bnb on steroids," he says. "We're doing a housing registry for refugees."

And offers of spare rooms and basement suites are streaming in. 

A real estate developer has offered free apartments.

"You know, I've got a lot of self-imposed bruises, because I'm pinching myself here. After 10 years of negative discourse on refugees, suddenly they've become sexy — everybody wants a refugee!"

What's the difference between Canada and the U.S., where President Obama's controversial plan to welcome 10,000 Syrians is still just a fraction of the numbers arriving in Europe? 

Well, one big factor is that Canada already had its election — before the attacks in Paris.

During the fall campaign, refugees got a lot of sympathy, partly because of that famous photo of the little boy who drowned on his way to Europe. It turned out, his family had applied to come to Canada — and had been denied. 

The boy's aunt lived in British Columbia, and Canadians saw her on TV, weeping over his death.

The Liberal Party's Justin Trudeau promised to bring in 25,000 Syrians, and now that he's prime minister, he says he's sticking with that plan — though his government hasn't yet released the details of how it will work, and there are some rumblings that the deadline will slip. The Paris attacks have had an effect on the public: One newspaper poll this week showed that a majority of Canadians now oppose fast-track resettlement.

Brad Wall, the premier of Saskatchewan, raised the possibility that rushing things could let a terrorist slip in.

"Usually, one miss out of 25,000 would be acceptable for government or for business, or for almost any organization," Wall said on CTV earlier this month. "I don't know that it is in this instance."

Still, this is Canada. Unlike some of the governors south of the border, Wall said he had no intention of trying to block the refugees from his province.

As a Maine Writer footnote -the ambitious Syrian refugees will undboutedly move quickly to become Canadian citizens and obtain their legitimate passports. After they're naturalized, nothing will prevent these new Canadians from entering the US.  Moreover, as the Syrians adapt to their Canadian nation, there will undoubtedly be cultural changes resulting from their assimilation. As the Syrians becomme prosperous and repay their adopted nation, they may well consider changing the culture to be more like Europeans than North Americans. 

It's possible.

Nevertheless, the result of bringing 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada is a wonderful Canadiann contribution to the humanitarian effort to help the desperate people who  are fleeing Syria and Iraq by the millions. Americans who oppose bringing in a mere 10,000 people are responding to unfounded fear and the governors who are cowardly about admitting these desperate people in their states should never call themselves Christians.