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Does Scottish gov’t turmoil signal the end of the ‘green’ agenda’s stranglehold on Europe?

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Former Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf

From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

‘Green’ politics is now understood as a campaign for electoral and national suicide. With the coming European elections the writing is on the wall for globalist ‘progressives’ across the continent.

The First Minister of Scotland, Humza Yousaf, quit on live television on April 29, following the collapse of his left/Green Party coalition government. A power sharing agreement between his bizarrely named Scottish National Party (SNP) and the Greens was broken over the SNP’s retreat on Net Zero commitments.

Despite his camera savvy assertions, Yousaf’s departure has nothing to do with either duty or principle, which he stressed in the speech announcing his resignation. It is the result of a feared public backlash against higher taxes, over-regulation, and the madness of progressive “green” policies which prefigures a European political realignment.

READ: Net Zero’s days are numbered? Why Europeans are souring on the climate agenda

Yousaf’s coalition with the Greens fell apart because his SNP had recognized that the extreme Net Zero agenda was unrealistic, and could deliver only electoral suicide. The SNP under Yousaf had abandoned its “decarbonization targets” in early April, with Green co-leaders Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie describing Yousaf’s attempts to ditch extremely unpopular policies as “an act of political cowardice” and a “betrayal.”

As a result, the Greens withdrew support from the SNP, which fell one seat short of a majority in 2021. A new deal with a new leader is unlikely, and the chaos spells doom for the SNP with an election coming this year. The SNP remains in power – for the time being – albeit in a minority government.

Wider lessons for globalist ‘greens’

The lesson from Scotland is that the liberal parties of Europe face electoral meltdown. A recent report from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) warned of a “sharp right turn” following EU elections in June:

Inside the European Parliament, a populist right coalition of Christian democrats, conservatives, and radical right MEPs could emerge with a majority for the first time.

The future spells doom for the doomsayers, it seems, with the globalist agenda under severe threat. The existence of the globalist EU itself may be threatened, with Unherd saying in December that this decade may be the EU’s last.

The ECFR report continued:

This ‘sharp right turn’ is likely to have significant consequences for European-level policies, which will affect the foreign policy choices that the EU can make, particularly on environmental issues, where the new majority is likely to oppose ambitious EU action to tackle climate change.

Germany next?

The SNP’s partnership in power with the “green” zealots mirrors that of the government of Europe’s former economic and industrial powerhouse, Germany.

The crisis-hit Scholz administration relies on the support of a Green party whose policies have not only devastated the economy with deindustrializationlockdown debt, and soaring energy prices, but have also, as in Scotland, advanced a raft of extremist “progressive” issues, such as the promotion of the “trans” movement, opposition to border and immigration control, with both Green parties pursuing policies strongly resented by the public.

Greens Go Further! Green Party campaign leaflet, Berlin, 2021

Scotland’s Greens sought to ban wood-burning stoves, and Germany’s Greens were met with similar outrage with their decision to ban gas-fired central heating, and mandate the use of heat pumps. Yet the money for the subsidies required has run out – as “green” policies have helped to destroy the economy.

The Greens succeeded in closing the last of Germany’s nuclear power stations in August 2023, but the policy of replacing home heating which works with an expensive alternative that does not, was met with widespread opposition.

As a result, it is not just heat pump sales that have plummeted in Germany, but the sales pitch of the international “green” lobby.

Faced with defeat in the European elections, which the ECFR blames on “national parties start[ing] to respond to the changing opinions of their voters,” many parties of the liberal establishment are rowing back on Net Zero commitments – as well as on other issues beloved of the shock-haired shock troops of “progress.”

The face of globalist progressives

The co-leader of the Scottish Greens is Patrick Harvie, whose social media accounts notify readers that his pronouns are he/him.

The causes he supports are an object lesson in how Net Zero is not the only crazy agenda aggressively pushed by the Greens, whose policy platform is increasingly seen as electorally toxic. He is a self-described member of the so-called “LGBTQ+ community,” identifying as “bisexual.”

Like many progressive fanatics, he strongly supports the futile and avoidable destruction of the population and nation of Ukraine.

Here he is in 2020, championing the prescription of hormones and surgery to sexualized children as “trans healthcare.”

Naturally, he repeatedly describes Christians with disdain, labelling the Christian Institute as a “hate group.” The institute “campaigns for “the furtherance and promotion of the Christian religion in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.”

As Britain’s Telegraph reported, explaining the background to the collapse of Yousaf’s SNP-Green coalition:

Harvie’s determination to indulge his permanently-angry purple-haired activists even at the expense of the Scottish Government’s credibility was probably the last straw for many senior SNP ministers, if not for Yousaf himself.

Harvie is a strong advocate of abortion. He and his party describe the reminder that the lives of unborn children have value as “misinformation and intimidation,” as they seek to afford “dignity and privacy” to women killing their children, “as they are at every other medical procedure.”

SPUC, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, pointed out that the measure to legally enforce “buffer zones” around abortion facilities was “opposed by 70 percent” of the Scottish public.

The Greens in Scotland, as in Germany, vehemently oppose any attempt to control mass migration – however weak and belated.

The Greens have also refused to alter their stance on the now discredited notion of “gender affirming care” for children.

Against scientific advice, the Greens prefer to support the views of the “trans community,” saying “lived experience” is a better guide to reality than the clinical evidence that prescribing hormones and surgery to confused children is wrong, and causes irreversible harm.

The U.K.’s Cass Review, published in mid-April, cited a lack of “evidence based guidelines,” noting that pro-transgender organizations such as WPATH had exerted considerable influence in the adoption of the Dutch Pathway – a template which resulted in rapid access to hormones and surgery including for children.

Cass said in her introduction, “Although some think the clinical approach should be based on a social justice model, the NHS works in an evidence-based way.”

The rejection of the fast track to “puberty blockers” mirrors a similar preference for evidence-based decisions in Western electorates.

The Godless, nation-wrecking policies of national suicide have produced enough evidence of the motives, methods, and monumental disaster of the globalist Green agenda. It is anti-natalist, pro-open borders, anti-family, and seeks to promote the sexual distortion of the lives of what few children we still have. In a final irony, is also destroying the economic prosperity on whose subsidies it relies for its own survival.

Happily, “green” politics is now understood as a campaign for electoral as well as national suicide. This realization has spelled the end of the appalling Scottish coalition government, and with the coming European elections the writing is on the wall for globalist “progressives” across the continent.

Humza Yousaf’s left/Green government was just the first Green-backed coalition which has ended in disaster. It will not be the last. For the reality based community, the best news is yet to come.

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Business

Will Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs End In Disaster Or Prosperity?

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By J.D. Foster

“Liberation Day” has come. So what does it mean? Beats the hell out of me.

What we know is that President Trump’s avalanche of tariffs was to hit a peak on April 2; not end, mind you; not necessarily “the” peak, as more could be on the way; but a peak.

No Trump policy more completely breaks with America’s past than his “beautiful” tariffs on just about everything coming into the United States from just about anywhere.

Will this new policy liberate American manufacturing from foreign shackles? Will it usher in a new era of prosperity, keeping in mind the United States had for many years the consistently best-performing economy in the industrialized world, even overcoming the many inane obstacles erected by the Biden-Harris Administration?

Or will it leave the United States isolated, friendless, and weakened?

The correct answer at this point is no one knows, not even the bloviating talking heads on TV confidently predicting demise or Shangri-la.

Think of it this way. Suppose you’re a restaurant chef and a woman hands you a new recipe. Her father turns 75 soon and they want to have a party at the restaurant. The recipe is for the father’s favorite dish, one her mother made for years.

The recipe looks old, with odd ingredients and processes you’ve not seen before. Now judge it as a chef.

You can’t. Even as you start chopping and dicing, mixing ingredients as instructed, you’re not too sure how this is going to turn out. You have to wait until the dish is on the plate and taste it.

That’s the case with Trump’s tariffs. How will this all turn out? It’s too soon to tell.

The stock market sure doesn’t like it, but why should it? The investor class doesn’t understand this any better than you do. What they do understand is this new policy has upended assumptions and created enormous new uncertainties. We know that dish as those ingredients are always good for a big pullback.

Much of the confusion arises because we don’t know the underlying policy and likely this uncertainty is intentional. Trump likes keeping his counterparts, in this case our trading partners, guessing. If it means Americans are confused for a bit, Trump’s cool with that. Breaking eggs to make an omelette. It will pass and America will be great again afterward. Bon appetite.

If the core policy is to erect massive and mostly permanent tariff walls behind which American firms can hide, then we know how this will turn out: America, meet the dustbin of history.

If the core policy is to force our trading partners to deal with America fairly by reducing their trade barriers after which Trump will remove his tariffs, then this could turn out very well. Tariffs (and non-tariff barriers) in the U.S. and those of our trading partners would fall, reinvigorating the free trade that has energized prosperity for decades.

Which is it? Walls and doom or freedom and prosperity? Again, too early to tell.

Whatever else Trump does in his second term, these tariffs will define his presidency, akin in consequence to Ronald Reagan’s pro-growth tax cuts and Joe Biden’s inflation.

Trump in his second term clearly lives by the saying, “go bold or go home.” He’s got “bold” down pat. We will see over the next year or so whether he and the Republicans go home. Has he liberated Democrats from any fear of Republicans in the mid-terms or in 2028, or he’s liberated America from any fear of Democratic socialism and wokism returning in our lifetimes. The chips are all-in. Soon we will see the cards. Uncertainty, indeed.

JD Foster is the former chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget and former chief economist and senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He now resides in relative freedom in the hills of Idaho.

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International

FREE MARINE LE PEN!’: Trump defends French populist against ‘lawfare’ charges

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From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

‘The Witch Hunt against Marine Le Pen is another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech, and censor their Political Opponent,’ Donald Trump on Truth Social.

U.S. President Donald Trump defended French populist Marine Le Pen as a fellow victim of “lawfare” after the popular opposition leader was barred from the 2027 French national election due to embezzlement charges.

“The Witch Hunt against Marine Le Pen is another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech, and censor their Political Opponent, this time going so far as to put that Opponent in prison,” Trump wrote Thursday night on Truth Social.

As of Sunday, Le Pen, head of the National Rally (RN) party, was leading polls to win the presidential election, being 11 to 17 points ahead of the party of the globalist President Emmanuel Macron.

On Monday, Le Pen was hit with a five-year ban on running for elected office and sentenced to four years of prison on charges of “misuse of EU funds,” although two years were suspended and the remaining two would be served through house arrest.

Le Pen and her co-defendants were specifically accused of illegally using European Parliament funds for party employees who “seldom (or never) dealt with affairs in Brussels or Strasbourg,” of which the court held Le Pen personally responsible for €474,000.

Her prison sentence has been paused as her lawyer appeals the ruling, but the ban on her running for office nevertheless remains in force, despite the fact that legal penalties are typically delayed during the appeals process, according to Politico.

In his Truth Social post, Trump accused French leftists of using a “minor charge” against Le Pen as a pretext to block her from office.

“Just before what would be a Big Victory, they get her on a minor charge that she probably knew nothing about – Sounds like a ‘bookkeeping’ error to me,” wrote Trump.

“It is all so bad for France, and the Great French People, no matter what side they are on. FREE MARINE LE PEN!” he concluded.

“I am Marine!” wrote Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on X Monday, in a cry of solidarity with his fellow anti-globalist.

“This is nuts,” remarked former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis on X. “Lawfare is wrong whomever it targets. And it is stupid to boot. France’s neofascists will only benefit from this, just as the MAGA lot did. A panicking illiberal establishment across the West is diving headlong into a totalitarian pit.”

“I am shocked by the incredible tough verdict against Marine Le Pen,” chimed in Geert Wilders, leader of a Dutch populist party that won a national election in 2023. “I support and believe in her for the full 100% and I trust she will win the appeal and become President of France.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has called the ruling a “violation of democratic norms,” and Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage denounced Le Pen’s “cancellation” as based on “a very trumped-up charge.”

“In this country we have nine county council elections on 1 May that won’t happen, and may not happen for years,” said Farage, according to the BBC. “And in France, they cancelled a candidate. A candidate that would, without doubt, have won the next French presidential election. And you know what, if looks to me like a very trumped-up charge.”

“They will not succeed in silencing the voice of the French people,” said Santiago Abascal, head of the pro-family, right-wing Vox party in Spain.

Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini urged Le Pen to keep fighting, calling her verdict a “bad film” akin to political shut-outs occuring in other countries like Romania.

“We will not be intimidated, we will not stop: full speed ahead my friend,” said Salvini.

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