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Opinion

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.

Business

Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan Ramp Up Pressure On Google Parent Company To Deal With ‘Censorship’

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Andi Shae Napier

Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan are turning their attention to Google over concerns that the tech giant is censoring users and infringing on Americans’ free speech rights.

Google’s parent company Alphabet, which also owns YouTube, appears to be the GOP’s next Big Tech target. Lawmakers seem to be turning their attention to Alphabet after Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta ended its controversial fact-checking program in favor of a Community Notes system similar to the one used by Elon Musk’s X.

Cruz recently informed reporters of his and fellow senators’ plans to protect free speech. 

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“Stopping online censorship is a major priority for the Commerce Committee,” Cruz said, as reported by Politico. “And we are going to utilize every point of leverage we have to protect free speech online.”

Following his meeting with Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai last month, Cruz told the outlet, “Big Tech censorship was the single most important topic.”

Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent subpoenas to Alphabet and other tech giants such as RumbleTikTok and Apple in February regarding “compliance with foreign censorship laws, regulations, judicial orders, or other government-initiated efforts” with the intent to discover how foreign governments, or the Biden administration, have limited Americans’ access to free speech.

“Throughout the previous Congress, the Committee expressed concern over YouTube’s censorship of conservatives and political speech,” Jordan wrote in a letter to Pichai in March. “To develop effective legislation, such as the possible enactment of new statutory limits on the executive branch’s ability to work with Big Tech to restrict the circulation of content and deplatform users, the Committee must first understand how and to what extent the executive branch coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech.”

Jordan subpoenaed tech CEOs in 2023 as well, including Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Tim Cook of Apple and Pichai, among others.

Despite the recent action against the tech giant, the battle stretches back to President Donald Trump’s first administration. Cruz began his investigation of Google in 2019 when he questioned Karan Bhatia, the company’s Vice President for Government Affairs & Public Policy at the time, in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Cruz brought forth a presentation suggesting tech companies, including Google, were straying from free speech and leaning towards censorship.

Even during Congress’ recess, pressure on Google continues to mount as a federal court ruled Thursday that Google’s ad-tech unit violates U.S. antitrust laws and creates an illegal monopoly. This marks the second antitrust ruling against the tech giant as a different court ruled in 2024 that Google abused its dominance of the online search market.

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2025 Federal Election

PRC-Linked Disinformation Claims Conservatives Threaten Chinese Diaspora Interests, Take Aim at PM Carney’s Debate Remark

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As polls tighten in Canada’s pivotal federal election, a Chinese-language website has published multiple editorials suggesting that a Pierre Poilievre government could threaten Chinese Canadian interests with so-called “anti-China” policy clauses—claiming it could bring “inconvenience to the lives of Chinese people, such as restrictions on the use of social media, reductions in return air tickets, etc.”

During the 2021 federal election, then-Conservative leader Erin O’Toole and MP Kenny Chiu were widely attacked with similar arguments across Chinese-language news and social media. CSIS reporting from 2022, cited exclusively by The Bureau, warned that Chinese-language media in Canada is effectively controlled by Beijing and weaponized during election periods to spread Chinese Communist Party-aligned narratives.

One of the new articles also criticizes Prime Minister Mark Carney’s debate remark that Beijing poses the greatest threat to Canada’s national security—a comment that prompted the Chinese-language editorial to question whether Carney’s statement was “a gimmick to attract attention.”

The articles, published Thursday and Friday by 51.ca, have raised deep concern among some community members. One longtime Chinese Canadian journalist, who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation, told The Bureau they were alarmed by the messaging and suspected the coverage was driven by election-interference motives.

One of the pieces claimed that “the Conservative Party has written anti-China clauses into the party platform,” referencing a prior story that quickly circulated on Chinese-language social media and triggered fearful discussion.

Citing WeChat commentary on the same article, the journalist pointed specifically to a politically connected figure previously associated with CSIS investigations into election interference networks in the Greater Toronto Area—allegedly tied to clandestine funding channels linked to the Chinese Consulate in Toronto.

Sharing a WeChat forum screen-picture, the diaspora journalist noted:

“The writer said, according to the Conservative’s campaign platform, China’s definition is ‘enemy.’ So what is the impact on Chinese Canadians’ daily life? Facing more discrimination? Fewer flights going back to China? How about using social media? If there is a war, what will happen to Chinese Canadians—like Japanese people were sent to the concentration camps or deported?”

The journalist said the messaging is not only inflammatory, but dangerously manipulative—casting the Conservative Party as a threat to the civil rights and safety of Chinese Canadians, while exploiting historical trauma to provoke fear.

The same 51.ca article—while quoting from the Conservative Party’s platform documents—shifts sharply into misleading commentary. It contrasts the party’s current positions with historical discrimination enacted by the Liberal government of the 1920s.

One of the recent 51.ca articles warns that the Conservative Party’s stance “can easily cause ethnic tensions and even exacerbate anti-China sentiment.”

A second article delivers a similar critique of Conservative policy while also taking aim at Prime Minister Mark Carney, who, in last night’s nationally televised debate, stated:

“I think the biggest security threat to Canada is China.”

That comment, consistent with assessments from Canadian intelligence services and allied Five Eyes partners, was immediately seized upon by 51.ca’s editorial board.

“Carney blurted out that China is Canada’s biggest threat. Is this a deep-rooted idea or a gimmick to attract attention? It is not known yet. But what is certain is that when other party leaders are talking about how to deal with the problems facing Canada itself, Carney is talking about China being the enemy. I really don’t know what’s going on in his mind.”

Both 51.ca articles strategically focus their sharpest criticism on the Conservative Party, portraying its platform as existentially dangerous, while the second treats Carney’s one-line debate comment as a moment of rhetorical overreach.

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