breakfastmtn

[T]o fully appreciate our new world disorder with its daily menu of betrayals, threats, tariffs, annexations and outright villainy, we require an honest political vocabulary.

So let’s call a spade a spade — and place the words we need in bold-faced italics. Words like revolution. Führer democracy. Orbánization. Mafia state.

Our neighbours to the south are in the throes of an ugly and (so far) bloodless, full-scale second American revolution.

Trump and his radical cadres have threatened Canada, abandoned European allies, humiliated and blackmailed Ukraine, dismantled the state’s bureaucracy, attacked its universities and embraced the ugly worldview of Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin.

These acts do not represent just another disruption or a transactional presidency. Or some new form of unconventional politics. We are witnessing a revolution that pretends to address numerous and often legitimate grievances by overthrowing the ruling social order.

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PM says he's available to talk if the president shows respect for Canada's sovereignty

Prime Minister Mark Carney says he still hasn't spoken U.S. President Donald Trump since taking office last week, implying the president is waiting for the results of the federal election — whoever that may be after April 28.

Carney, who was sworn in as prime minister 10 days ago, told reporters Monday he's willing to speak to Trump, if the president shows respect for Canada.

"I'm available for a call, but we're going to talk on our terms. As a sovereign country — not as what he pretends we are — and on a comprehensive deal," said Carney during a campaign stop in Gander, N.L., where he leaned heavily on Canadian patriotism.

In the latest sign of the deteriorating relationship between the two once close allies, Carney's team said Trump hasn't called Carney to congratulate him on becoming prime minister, and hasn't posted anything online either.

Mark Carney has lamented Canada’s lost friendship with the United States as he visited the town that sheltered thousands of stranded American airline passengers after the 9/11 attacks.

The Canadian prime minister’s visit to Gander, Newfoundland, on the second day of a national election campaign comes against the backdrop of a trade war and sovereignty threats from Donald Trump.

“In this crisis caused by the US president and those who are enabling him, we lament a friendship lost,” Carney said on Monday. “In Gander Canadians did extraordinary things for Americans when they needed it. Now, we need to do extraordinary things for ourselves.”

Residents of Gander opened their arms to nearly 6,600 airline passengers diverted there when the US government shut down airspace during 9/11.

The post-second world war taboo on acquiring territory through force or by the threat of force is being unravelled by a generation of political leaders, led by expansionist threats from Donald Trump that are unprecedented for a US president.

Experts are warning that a combination of the Russian aggression against Ukraine and Trump’s comments explicitly pushing for the US to acquire Greenland, Canada, the Panama canal and Gaza is fuelling a permissive environment that threatens long-recognised borders and the international rules-based order that has existed since the end of the war.

The norm, enshrined in article 2 of the UN charter of 1945, states that “all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”.

. . .

The headline of an essay in the current issue of Foreign Affairs puts it bluntly: “Conquest is back.”

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I had a conversation last week with a Canadian journalist about the culture war on American campuses. After we finished talking about that, she had one final question for me.

“What the hell is Trump thinking about Canada?”

. . .

So, how did I answer my new Canadian friend? “Canada is Donald Trump’s Ukraine.”

Apparently, Trump agrees. On Friday, he made the comparison explicit. While talking to the press in the Oval Office, he once again called for Canada to become the 51st state and then compared Canada’s bargaining position to Ukraine’s. “The expression I use is some people don’t have the cards,” he said. “I used the expression about a week and a half ago” — referring to his infamous exchange with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, when he told Zelensky: “You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now.”

I did not mean that Trump is preparing to invade or use force against Canada. But he does intend to dominate Canada, to render it little more than a vassal of the United States, making it only nominally independent. In fact, you can’t fully understand Trump’s approach to Ukraine without understanding his view of Canada (or Mexico or Greenland or Panama) — and vice versa.

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An Israeli airstrike on a hospital in Gaza has killed five people, including a Hamas political leader and Palestinian medics, Hamas has said, in an attack that Israel said had targeted a key figure in the militant group.

The Gaza health ministry said the strike hit the surgery department at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis. The Israeli military said its attack followed extensive intelligence and used precise munitions to minimise harm at the site.

Hamas said a member of its political office, Ismail Barhoum, had been killed.

Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, confirmed the target was Barhoum. The military did not name the target, which it described only as “a key terrorist” in Hamas.

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As a Canadian federal election approaches, Johnstone and other advocates are planning a feisty grassroots campaign to push back against misinformation and hate.

“Drag the Vote is a campaign created by our team here at Queer Momentum, supporting grassroots organizers, activists, parents and families to speak up in response to anti-2SLGBTQ+ hate and to encourage Canadians to speak up with us for freedom, equality, and human rights,” Johnstone said.

. . .

Trans and queer people have faced a sharp rise in intolerance and hate over the past few years. There have been violent threats against drag performances and large protests that featured homophobic and transphobic language. Old tropes like claiming that queer people are a threat to children have once again become common.

On the first Sunday in March, I was cycling along the Rawlings Trail in Vancouver’s Stanley Park, past numerous strollers and cyclists enjoying the balmy early-spring weather.

Near Second Beach I was keeping an eye out for coyotes. What I saw beside the trail instead was a bright splash of auburn glory.

Only two legs were visible, bright yellow, so clearly not a canine. Two people were standing nearby. I stopped my bike, and together we contemplated the rather surreal presence of a large, apparently healthy, thoroughly placid rooster.

The bird’s guardians introduced themselves as Karl and Olya Schmidt. They were not its owners, they assured me — they had simply come upon the bird as he pecked his contented way around the path.

When demonstrators gathered ­at Istanbul’s city hall last week in outrage at the arrest of mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, 26-year-old Azra said she was initially too scared to defy a ban on gatherings. As protests grew on university campuses and in cities and towns across Turkey, she could no longer resist joining.

“I saw the spark in people’s eyes and the excitement on their faces, and I decided I had to come down here,” she said with a grin, standing among tens of thousands that defied a ban on assembly to fill the streets around city hall on Friday night. Despite the crowds, Azra feared reprisals and declined to give her full name. Many demonstrators were masked in a bid to defy facial recognition ­technology and fearing the teargas or pepper spray sometimes deployed by the police. Others smiled and took ­selfies to celebrate as fireworks illuminated the night sky.

The arrest of the mayor of Turkey’s largest city in a dawn raid last week was a watershed moment in the country’s prolonged shift away from democracy. Opponents of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan fear it is a move to ­sideline the sole challenger capable of defeating him in upcoming elections, expected before 2028.

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In Gaza this weekend, the mood is darker than it has been at perhaps any time in this long, appalling war. Last Tuesday Israeli warplanes, tanks, artillery, drones and ships launched a wave of strikes, shattering the increasingly fragile pause in hostilities that had brought respite to the devastated territory for nearly two months. The ceasefire had also brought hope which, Palestinians in Gaza said, made the return to violence that much more unbearable.

In a video statement last Wednesday, Israel Katz, Israel’s defence minister, called on 2.3 million people in Gaza to “banish Hamas”, saying “the alternative is complete destruction and ruin”.

Two days later, as air strikes continued and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) seized a key strategic corridor that divides Gaza, Katz issued a new ultimatum, this time telling Hamas to give up the 59 hostages it is still holding or “lose more and more land that will be added to Israel”. He said that the IDF would use “all military and civilian pressure, including … implementing US President Trump’s voluntary migration plan for Gaza residents”.

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President Trump broadened his campaign of retaliation against lawyers he dislikes with a new memorandum that threatens to use government power to punish any law firms that, in his view, unfairly challenge his administration.

The memorandum directs the heads of the Justice and Homeland Security Departments to “seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious litigation against the United States” or in matters that come before federal agencies.

Mr. Trump issued the order late Friday night, after a tumultuous week for the American legal community in which one of the country’s premier firms, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, struck a deal with the White House to spare the company from a punitive decree issued by Mr. Trump the previous week.

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Joseph Woll is projected to start for the Toronto Maple Leafs against the Nashville Predators on Saturday.

Woll has been excellent form lately, winning his past three starts. The 26-year-old has posted a 24-12-0 record in 36 appearances with a .908 save percentage. Although it appeared that Anthony Stolarz may be pulling away to start the playoffs, Woll has quietly been better through March, and his uptick in form may present head coach Craig Berube with a good dilemma to conclude the regular season.

Toronto is keeping its lines intact from Thursday’s 4-3 victory over the New York Rangers. Bobby McMann, John Tavares and William Nylander caught fire during the game, with Tavares scoring two goals, while reaching the 1,100-point milestone for his career. source

Projected Lineup:

Matthew Knies -- Auston Matthews -- Mitch Marner
Bobby McMann -- John Tavares -- William Nylander
Pontus Holmberg -- Max Domi -- Nicholas Robertson
Scott Laughton -- David Kampf -- Steven Lorentz

Morgan Rielly -- Brandon Carlo
Jake McCabe -- Chris Tanev
Simon Benoit -- Oliver Ekman-Larsson

Joseph Woll
Anthony Stolarz

Scratched: Calle Jarnkrok, Philippe Myers

Injured: Jani Hakanpaa (lower body), Max Pacioretty (tightness)