The UK Fairford Airbase Incident

The wildly divergent stories surrrounding the UK Fairford Airbase incident, in which five UK nationals were "detained" near the Fairford airbase in the UK on charges related to explosives and terroriism and subsequently released on bail, raise real questions for me on whether the press freedoms we've assumed were largely equivalent in the UK to those in the US actually exist. Here's the initial version we heard on Sunday:

British police arrested five men on suspicion of explosives and terrorism offences on Sunday near an air base that has been used by the US to ​strike Iran, after a tip-off that three vans had been seen heading to the military airfield.

US President Donald Trump said the suspects had been looking to ‌do "big damage" and had been under investigation by British and US authorities.

British counterterrorism detectives leading the investigation said police had received a call about three suspicious vehicles that appeared to be travelling towards RAF Fairford in the west of England in the early hours of Sunday.

Five men were arrested by armed officers and later held on suspicion of preparation of a terrorist act. Police, who said they believed the incident was now contained, have ​not yet publicly stated who they assessed was involved.

But soon enough, it emerged that police responded to the scene only because a local woman returning with her husband from a party found the suspects and three vans blocking the road to their farm:

The farmer who told police about the suspected RAF Fairford terror plot has claimed she saw up to 10 masked people by the base - as police said five men arrested will be bailed.The woman, in her 50s, from Whelford, alerted police after seeing three vans blocking a road near the base, which has been used by the US to bomb missile sites in Iran, while on her way back from a party.Five British nationals were then arrested in the early hours of Sunday morning on suspicion of explosives offences and later terrorism. The farmer who dialled 999 has now claimed there were "definitely more than five", and estimated she saw between eight and 10 people with their faces covered and wearing "slim-fitting clothes".

. . . One of the vans had some "strange sign writing on it" she said and initially she believed it was a vehicle belonging to undercover police.

She said: "We had a bit of a look at the vans, established there was no one in there, tried to phone the number on the side, just in case we could get it moved, so we could drive down to the farmyard, and the number didn't work."

.. . The farmer then said she tried to call the MoD police, but the phone "just rang and rang and rang, and no one answered", before she called 101 and was put on hold.She phoned 999 at 01:36am and messaged the village WhatsApp group to alert people to the unusual activity. "Literally within five minutes of that, everything sort of kicked off, and armed police arrived, the guys were arrested," she said."The helicopter was up searching, probably for a couple of hours and there was a lot of shouting." She added: "The strange thing is, there was no kind of follow up."The police didn't ring me, they had all my details, they didn’t phone me back, and nobody told anyone in the village what was going on apart from me. It wasn’t until probably half six in the morning when they suddenly decide to evacuate people."Meanwhile, those vans were right in the middle of the village, next to everyone’s houses and no one did anything."

As of this morning,

Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that a recent thwarted terror plot near a United Kingdom military base used by the United States involved a "foreign actor," linking the incident to global threats from adversaries such as Iran.

"What happened, what almost happened, what could have happened in the U.K. over the weekend is a very serious situation," Rubio told Fox News' "Hannity" on Monday night. "It's one that clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor."

"I won't get into great detail about that yet."

. . . "I want to thank the U.K. for their cooperation and their help on it," he said. "There's a lot more news that will come out on this in the days to come. But there's only so much I can say right now at this point about it, other than this was a very serious thing, and it was responded to appropriately."

British police declared a major incident at the RAF Fairford base in western England following the arrests early Sunday, and the government held a national emergency meeting.

On the other hand, according to the UK Independent,

Marco Rubio is “disturbed” and Donald Trump “surprised” that five suspects in what the US president and his secretary of state continue to insist was a suspected terror plot have been released on police bail.

Despite a recent charm offensive by Andy Burnham, America’s leaders will be among the last to know genuine secrets held by British intelligence because Britain’s intelligence services do not trust the White House not to leak.

The Five Eyes arrangements in which the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK share almost all the "product" of espionage still exist.

But the most sensitive stuff is kept out of the general circulation because the US president has a record of blurting “eyes only”, higher than “top secret” data to other nations – like Russia.

. . . On Fairford, it is clear that the US was briefed that there was, or could have been, a plot to attack the base. Security was ramped up at the site and even locals were told that something was afoot.

The US has a massive signal intelligence gathering system in the National Security Agency that may, along with Britain’s GCHQ, have picked up electronic traffic that suggested a plot. But any other information would have come from British intelligence operating in Britain.

American agencies do not, and are not allowed, to work in the UK.

Trump’s White House lives in a state of permanent delusion about how the world works. It bases its national security strategy on the great replacement theory – a racist lie that Europe is being overrun by Muslim immigrants.

The official UK position is unclear as of this morning:

[P]reiminary reports from the British Press Association and others suggested the materials in the vehicles were not viable explosives, but counterterrorism and explosives experts continued to examine the scene.

The head of UK Counter Terrorism Policing, Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, acknowledged the "significant interest in whether the current geopolitical context has a bearing on this incident," and said investigators were considering "every possible angle."

One of these angles, he said, was the possibility "that this may be actively committed by proxies or individuals either knowingly or unknowingly working on behalf of a foreign state."

Taylor said that the men had been released under stringent conditions, and that granting them bail did not in any way signify an end to investigations against them.

Defense Secretary Wes Streeting said that decisions like granting bail were operational matters for police and prosecutors, not politicians.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham chaired a security meeting known as Cobra, after the secure Cabinet Office Briefing Room A that hosts such sessions, on Monday evening.

Certainly the position we're now hearing from within the UK is that maybe this isn't such a big deal after all, and Trump and Rubio are, as usual, "delusional". But why were three white vans with 8-10 masked guys dressed in black blocking a farm road near the airbase in the small hours Sunday morning? And one of the trucks was marked "FUEL2YOU", similar to a company called FUEL2U that delivers bulk fuel, but

https://t.co/AKgcwbom9y

— GeoInsider (@InsiderGeo) September 27, 2026

Nevertheless, as of yesterday, The Guardian was relieved that this was probably no big deal:

Investigators may be some way from determining exactly what led five men with three vans to a village just outside RAF Fairford in the small hours of Sunday – but the fact they have all been released on bail without immediate charge suggests they are not deemed to pose a serious and violent threat.

In a moment where wider geopolitical tensions mean external threats are perceived to be close, the question of whether Iran had a hand in the alleged plot remains open. Nonetheless, the bailing of the men is a mercifully lower-key development in an investigation that appeared of the utmost gravity.

Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform, had earlier insisted that the Fairford incident “proves my point on Iran” and argued that anybody arriving on small boats should not be allowed to move around in the UK. The latter point was an irrelevant argument, already weakened when police said at lunchtime that all five were UK nationals from London.

Though the five were arrested on suspicion of carrying explosives and involvement in a terror plot, after more than 24 hours of searches, nothing had been discovered that would prompt further police action – perhaps explaining why MI5 had no idea that the men and their vans would turn up a mile from the base with unclear intent.

British officials admitted on Sunday the arrests were not led by intelligence, but rather last-minute warnings on the ground. Counter-terror police said they were first aware of three vehicles travelling to the base at 12.45am on Sunday, while a local farmer phoned 999 at 1.36am after the vans blocked the entrance to her drive.

But whether or not those arrested were UK nationals, police are refusing to release their names. Any suggestion that Muslims, especially home-grown ones, coulld be involved in an anti-US plot could be extremely embarrassing to the government, and clearly the UK press is working to minimize potential damage. What we can say for now is:

• Secretary Rubio, not given to hyperbole, is saying with apparent confidence that a "foreign actor" is involved
• Three vans, one with a fictitious sign, and 8-10 masked men were encountered on a farm road near RAF Fairford early Sunday
• Sources suggest these were related to other activity known to US and/or UK intelligence.

That seems awful hinky to me, but UK legacy media is trying to downplay it, apparently with government connivance. We'll have to see what else comes out.

In Hoc Signo Vinces

After I saw the essay I linked yesterday om "Crusadesmaxxing", I went looking for the conventional wisdom and quickly found it:

In an open letter, bishops, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, and leaders from the Methodist, Baptist, Evangelical, Salvation Army and Catholic traditions said they were “deeply concerned about the co-opting of Christian symbols, particularly the cross, during Saturday’s ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally.”

The signatories acknowledged frustrations among protesters and affirmed free speech but stressed that aspects of the march carried “racist, anti-Muslim and far right elements".

. . . The letter concluded with a call for unity: “As Christian leaders we are proud of our country and commit ourselves to work with others building a more United Kingdom where the values of love, humility and compassion shine through in every community; and we do so unapologetically in the name of Jesus Christ.”

It's odd that "Christian leaders" seem to be so unfamiliar with Christian history. Did Cromwell, who did so much to establish the principle of Parliamentary supremacy, co-opt Christian values when he made his war cry "God and our Strength"? Did Winston Churchill co-opt Christian values when he hosted an Anglican church service that FDR attended on board the HMS Prince of Wales during the August, 1941 Atlantic Conference? Certinly it was his goal to ingratiate himself with Roosevelt and get him into the war by, among other things, stressing their joint Anglican background.

It's a commonplace that people fall back on religious faith in times of crisis, as well as to call on God to defeat their enemies, and Scripture in fact encourages this: Psalm 17:8–9:

Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings from the wicked who despoil me, my deadly enemies who surround me.

Psalm 43:1:

Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people; from the deceitful and unjust man deliver me!

Psalm 46:2:

God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in distress.

Psalm 71:1:

In you, LORD, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame.

Psalm 119:114:

You are my refuge and shield; in your word I hope.

I think it's appropriate to put this in a UK context: it's been a tacit but never fully articulated policy by successive UK governments deliberately to import South Asian migrants, frequently Muslim, in response to perceived "labor shortages" since the postwar period. It's very slowly become known that these largely Muslim migrants felt entitled to rape the daughters of working-class native Brits on a systematic basis, and beyond that, it was a tacit but never fully articulated policy by successive UK governments to enable this on one hand and cover it up on the other.

Now, faced with a new and even more severe migration crisis, successive UK governments have chosen not to take any effective action to limit additional waves of largely young, male Muslim migrants, and indeed now to distribute them around the countryside in a way that makes rape of native Brit women even more convenient.

The Brits are a remarkably docile people. Their army during World War I was cavalierly sacrificed, but there were never mutinies comparable to the French army in 1917:

More than one million French soldiers (306,000 in 1914, 334,000 in 1915, 287,000 in 1916, 121,000 in early 1917), out of a population of twenty million males of all ages, had been killed in fighting by early 1917. The losses had weakened the French will to attack.

. . . In April 1917, General Robert Nivelle promised a war-winning decisive victory.

. . . The Nivelle Offensive failed to achieve its strategic objectives, and by 25 April, most of the fighting had ended. On 3 May, the French 2nd Division refused to follow orders to attack, and the mutiny soon spread throughout the army.

. . . By 28 May, mutinies broke out in the 9th Division, 158th Division, 5th Division and the 1st Cavalry Division. By the end of May, more units of the 5th, 6th, 13th, 35th, 43rd, 62nd, 77th and 170th Divisions had mutinied, and revolts occurred in 21 divisions in May. A record 27,000 French soldiers deserted in 1917; the offensive was suspended on 9 May.

The Brits also tolerated severe rationing during World War II:

A typical person’s weekly ration allowed them 1 egg, 2 ounces each of tea and butter, an ounce of cheese, eight ounces of sugar, four ounces of bacon and four ounces of margarine.

But with the end of the war, the rationing simply continued:

Bread was not rationed until after the war ended, but the "National Loaf" of wholemeal bread replaced the white variety. It was found to be mushy, grey and easy to blame for digestion problems. There were four permitted loaves and slicing and wrapping were not permitted. 

What I'm beginnibng to see is a certain level of nervousness by the elites -- Rowan Williams, for example -- that the lower classes are becoming restive, and they're starting to rally around battle flags. In light of what the Brits have tolerated for centuries, often apparently reassuring themselves that bad as they've had it, the workers have had it worse, so we're OK, it will be something of a surprise if the worm actually turns one day. Maybe it's a good sign that a few people are starting to worry.

But it's going to take historic levels of dissatisfaction in the home country -- unlike anything we've seen since 1642 -- for anything to change. But if people are starting to call on tbe Almighty, this could be a sign.

UK Parliamentary Supremacy Comes Home To Roost

Like Ceuta, the plight of the UK village Piddington hasn't received major attention in US media:

A tiny English village has voted overwhelmingly to leave the United Kingdom in a symbolic referendum triggered by government plans to house more than 1,200 male asylum seekers at a former military site nearby.

Residents of Piddington, a rural village in Oxfordshire, voted 285 to 26 to "secede from the UK and pursue self-determination," with a turnout of nearly 92%. The vote has no legal force.

Piddington has a population of around 350 people. The asylum accommodation plan would house up to 1,256 asylum seekers, more than three times the population of the village, at a former British military base in Bicester, half a mile from Piddington.

The site would operate as a non-detained asylum accommodation, meaning the asylum seekers would be able to come and go. The proposed development would operate for 10 years, the U.K. Home Office said.

The citizens of Piddington rightly object that with 1200 males boarded within walking distance of the village without women or families, it will suddenly be impossible for local women to be outdoors. A second village, Barnham, is in a near identical situation and mulling a Piddington-style "referendum", although this would be an equally futile gesture.

I've discovered that Chrome AI mode is quite good at explaining the UK "constitution". I asked it, "Do citizens in the US have protections against the government relocating migrants Piddington style near rural towns that aren't available in the UK?" It answered,

Yes, US citizens have structural and constitutional protections against top-down federal site placement that are generally not available to citizens in the UK. The situation in the UK—demonstrated by the village of Piddington voting symbolically to "secede" from the UK after the national Home Office unilaterally decided to place 1,250 asylum seekers at a nearby Ministry of Defence base—highlights a system of highly centralized authority.

The differences in legal recourse and citizen protections between the two nations come down to federalism, constitutional checks on land use, and local governance power.

In the UK, The Westminster government possesses supreme legal authority (parliamentary sovereignty). If the central Home Office decides to bypass local planning authorities using emergency powers or Crown immunity on central government property (like MoD Bicester near Piddington), local councils and citizens have almost no legislative veto power. Their only real option is a "Judicial Review" in court, which only checks if the government followed its own bureaucratic rules, not whether the decision itself was fair to the town.

The US operates under a system of dual sovereignty divided between the federal government and individual states. The federal government does not have the constitutional authority to unilaterally commandeer state or local resources, personnel, or local zoning laws to manage, house, or process migrants.

In the US, local governments rely heavily on Zoning Laws and "Home Rule" charters to dictate how land within their borders is used. If the federal government or a federal contractor attempts to buy or lease private land near a rural town to build a massive migrant processing or housing facility, they must generally comply with local municipal zoning ordinances (e.g., environmental impact reports, occupancy limits, sewage capacity, and commercial vs. residential permits).

A footnote to the Pddington question that's covered in the YouTube video embedded above is that the residents of Piddington, who are actually modern upscale elite, not traditional English yeomen, were actually near-unanimous in supporting migrants, and they changed their tune only when they realized they'd be moving in next door. But there's the problem, Parliament doesn't need to get anyone's permission.

Basically, UK citizens lack the constitutional protections US citizens have that prevent the government from unleashing illegal migrants on local communities without providing any sort of protection -- the local police will simply be overwhelmed. The Southampton police have already said they can't manage just the protests against migrant dinghy landings, much less the migrants themselves.

The UK system of government as it emerged from the 1600s is currently failing its citizens. This essay misses that point:

The Jerusalem Cross is going up on A-road lampposts. Richard the Lionheart kit at Reform rallies. Templars at Tommy Robinson marches. “Christ is King!” cried by Danny Tommo and his lot down in Dover. Crusader crosses are quietly usurping the Cross of St George — itself a crusader cross — at Portsmouth, London and points between. The algorithm is pumping out AI knight reels faster than a medieval pope pumping out papal bulls. England is Crusadesmaxxing.

. . . Crusadesmaxxing is nationwide. Our national flag came to us, bit by bit, by way of the Templars. Our patron saint St George entered the hearts of Englishmen at the Siege of Antioch in 1098. There the warrior saint arrived with a blazing white banner, succouring the knights to victory. At the Battle of Arsuf less than a century later our allegiance to the warrior saint was sealed. There he joined King Richard’s cavalry charge in the humiliation of Saladin, Butcher of the East.

. . . Explaining the Crusader comeback doesn’t take too much imagination. Hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants, predominantly from Muslim-majority countries, is no doubt a part of it. When Pakistani rape-gang survivors like Ella Hill recount being told that white “kafir” girls are slags who “don’t obey Allah” and therefore had it coming, my blood boils. The stories match the abuse of Christians in the Holy Land a millennium ago. Today’s lanyard elites have ignored it. But the chain-mail elites did not.

The writer almost -=- but not quite -- grasps that the UK public appears to be adopting what is essentially a pre-Reformation metaphorical structure:

Luther lashed the Crusades to the papacy he hated. The friar changed his tune somewhat when the Turks laid siege to Vienna in 1529. How convenient. Then came the Enlightenment. Edward Gibbon wrote in his Decline and Fall…: “The principle of the crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most important effects were analogous to the cause.” Voltaire added that it was plunder and papal ambition, not defence or piety, that inspired the Christian soldiers.

The problem is that the English, and then the UK, government tied itself to Protestantism. The whole subtext of Charles I's execution, the 1688 Revolution, and the 1701 Settlement Act was that the country was officially Protestant. The problem is that this sort of respectable Protestantism has run its course. Charles III is some sort of goofy New Age type who's lately been playing footsie with Muslims, but that's where Proteatantism has been headed.

In effect, by adopting pre-Reformation imagery, the UK protesters are assserting that another major feature of national life, the Church of England, has failed them and isn't maintaining a defense against Islam, although Protestantism never really did. If there's any hope for the UK, it's going to have to back up to pre-Reformation times, take a hard look at the US Constitution, and start over.

Breakling Down Canada's Position In The Trade War

Every now and then, Real Clear Politics runs a piece that's worth reading, in this case, Canada Dreaming by Nicholas Phillips. He brings up points about "associate membership" in the EU that nobody else has mentioned:

Last year, Canada exported about $400 billion worth of goods to the United States, responsible for nearly 16% of total Canadian GDP and for 41% of all Canadian manufacturing jobs, including over 75% of auto jobs. Conversely, Canada sends about $40 billion of goods to the EU. For Carney’s strategy to work, there needs to be demand in the EU to replace any reduction in goods that Canada sells to the US. But the project of redirecting Canada’s exports away from the United States and toward the EU looks like a project to make water run uphill.

The most popular policy for creating demand, a free trade agreement, was already implemented in 2016. CETA, the Canada-EU free trade agreement, hasn’t been ratified by all EU member states but its key terms are already in force on a provisional basis. That means that the vast majority of goods trade between Canada and the EU already takes place on a zero-tariff basis. No new demand to unlock there.

. . . Canada has very tight regulatory alignment with the United States, the product of decades of trade negotiations and supply-chain integration. The EU, meanwhile, remains an exceptionally jealous guardian of its regulatory standards. The bloc requires non-members, such as Norway and Switzerland, to adopt EU regulations and pay into the EU budget as a condition of accessing its large single market. The EU has no incentive to allow Canada to enjoy the benefits of the EU market without these obligations, because member states would likely demand similar treatment and fracture the bloc. After Carney’s speech at the EU Parliament, EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič cautioned that “there would be no special treatment for Ottawa.”

Even if it could be achieved, the project of Canada-EU regulatory alignment would be a curious way to safeguard Canada’s sovereignty. The essence of the European project is the delegation of national authority to a transnational bureaucracy in Brussels for the sake of economic integration. Further, the project is zero-sum. Canada is already embedded in a North American regulatory system under USMCA, which contains extensive disciplines on technical standards, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, testing, certification, and regulatory cooperation. Achieving regulatory alignment with Europe means ditching these USMCA commitments, creating costly new barriers to trade with the United States.

In other words, as of now, the EU represents only 10% of Canadian exports to the US. Somehow, Canada would need to ramp up its trade with the EU suddenly by an additional $396 billion to compensate for the loss of US trade. But Canada would almost certainly have to pay the EU for access to its market as a non-member, as Norway and Switzerland currently do. As of 2016, Norway paid the EU roughly 890 million euros. In addition, full EU members pay roughly 1% of annual GDP to the EU. We don't know what Canada would pay as an "associate member", but Canada's GDP is roughly $2.8 trillion, so as a full member, it would pay $28 billion.

We must assume that "associate membership" in the EU would come at a cost in the billions, which woulld add to the shortfall Canada would have to make up in lost US trade. But add to this the fact that EU membership involves at least a partial loss of sovereignty. Mark Carney would have to cone up with an awfully good deal. How can he sell it?

Here Phillips comes up with another insight: Carney is manufacturing an existential crisis:

Carney’s move is being cast in world-historical terms as his approval ratings break 60%. Clearly, there is a sense of national consciousness awakening as a country that had long settled into a comfortable routine discovers a grand purpose.

Carney himself appears to agree, reaching for analogies to the most decisive conflicts in Western history to describe the stakes of the present moment. In a speech last week before the European Parliament, Carney invoked Buchenwald, the World Wars, and the most portentous dates of the post-war order: “Freedom and life must be earned every single day. Every day. Not once in 1945, or 1956, or 1989. Every day, including this one.”

. . . Conditioning Canada’s preferential market access on limiting trade with China, or denying an auto tariff reduction to pickup trucks, does not merit analogies to the World Wars. Even with the Trump administration’s sectoral tariffs, the average U.S. tariff on Canadian imports is 5%—not quite the invasion of France. Yet Canadian media has decided to emphasize Trump’s rhetoric over his actual policies, comparing Carney to Winston Churchill and earnestly asking whether Trump plans to invade Canada (the bewildered American admiral’s response: “Would you ask me, please, also, what my attack plans are for the Martians?”). Carney’s popularity has surged as he single-handedly turns this perplexing trade dispute into a crisis and manufactures a grand trial for Canadian nationhood.

It seems that the real driver of these events is the psychic need for such a trial. Canada hasn’t had one in a long time, and prosperous liberal societies aren’t very good at generating them even as we crave thymos, the Greek term for the spiritedness that comes from struggle and purpose.

This brings me to the standup routine embedded above from Ben Bankas, a Canadian-born current US resident who recently returned to sellout crowds in Toronto.

So noce to be back on the shores of Lake America. [enthusiastic applause] The nice part about Toronto, it's on the lake. Yeah, that's the American part. . . . I'd be happy if America took over at this point. I mean, it'd be a celebration. The only people who'd be pissed off if the Americans took over would be the liberal white people. Cause the conservatives would be oh, [bleep] yeah, I'm moving to Tampa.

There are Canadians with a sense of humor, by no means a majority, I'll admit, but some of them are laughing pretty hard lately.

Why On Earth Would The US Invade Canada?

A month ago, I referred to the conclusion by senior Canadian generals that if the US invaded Canada, Canadian arned forces could hold out for two days. In the same post, I also referred to a Carleton University paper that concluded, "However improbable a war with America might be, the reality is that the U.S. already has in place a number of strategies that can and will be leveraged to its advantage to achieve its strategic objectives."

(Note, by the way, that however much Canadians complain about the US referring to itself as "America", the Canadians at Carleton reflexively do it themselves.) Between them, Mark Carney and Doug Ford are slowly acknowledging that the US and Canada are at some sort of war, but the US doesn't even need to mobilize the Michigan National Guard to win it. Just for starters, the current Trump-imposed tariffs amount to a blockade without the trouble and expense of having the Navy enforce it.

But a bigger and more troubling question is why the US would ever want actually to annex Canada. The first problem is that Canadian elites are well on the way to replacing the native-born Canadian middle and working classes with third-world immigrants. According to Wikipedia,

Statistics Canada projects that immigrants will represent between 29.1% and 34.0% of Canada's population in 2041, compared with 23.0% in 2021, while the Canadian population with at least one foreign born parent (first and second generation persons) could rise to between 49.8% and 54.3%, up from 44.0% in 2021. The number of people in the category "visible minorities" is by 2041 projected to double, making up the majority of the population of cities in Canada.

In addition,

The number of Canadians who spoke predominantly a South Asian language such as Gujarati, Punjabi, Hindi or Malayalam at home grew significantly from 2016 to 2021, an increase fuelled by immigration. In fact, the growth rate of the population speaking one of these languages was at least eight times larger than that of the overall Canadian population during this period.

In addition, the Canadian standard of living has been measurably declining, and voters appear to be satisfied with this:

The gap in living standards between Canada and the U.S. has more than doubled over the past quarter-century, with Canada increasingly lagging behind the U.S., according to a new study by the Fraser Institute.

I drove to Alaska through Canada in the esrly 1980s, and I got a good impression of day-to-day life there at the time -- and things like the poor quality of restaurant food and the lack of air conditioning were noticeable then. Apparently things have only gotten worse. The link continues,

The report by the fiscally conservative think tank also found the sharpest decline occurred post-2014, meaning during the decade the Justin Trudeau government was in power.

The study compared real (inflation-adjusted) GDP per person in Canada to the U.S., a widely accepted measure of the standard of living in both countries, from 1999 to 2024.

It found in 1999, real GDP per person in Canada was $48,076 compared to $58,842 in the U.S. in constant Canadian dollars, a gap of $10,766.

But by 2024, the gap had increased to $23,757, at $59,529 in Canada compared to $83,286 in the U.S.

The study noted the steepest decline started after 2014, when Canada’s real GDP per person as a share of the U.S. economy fell from 83.1% in that year to 71.5% in 2024.

Immigration drives up social costs, lowers wages, and drives up rents. Another problem is increasingly widespread euthanasia, which is also driving down the native-born population:

REVEALED: More Canadians die from MAID each year than Americans do from gun homicideshttps://t.co/cxiRCXeWKd

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) September 22, 2026

According to Dordt University,

Since legalization, the number of euthanasia deaths in Canada has steadily grown every year and showed little sign of slowing down. Between 2016 and 2023, over 60,000 Canadians have been euthanized, with over 15,000 in 2023 alone. Euthanasia now accounts for 4.7% of all deaths in the country, a rate second only to the Netherlands. Euthanasia is now the fifth most common cause of death in Canada. Compare these numbers with Oregon, the first American state to legalize assisted suicide in 1997. In 2023, 367 people died by assisted suicide in Oregon, or just 0.8% of all deaths in the state.

Of course, Oregon and other American states only permit assisted suicide, where a doctor gives the patient the means to end their own life. In Canada, assisted suicide is permitted but nearly non-existent. Instead, MAiD deaths are almost exclusively due to euthanasia, where a doctor actively ends a patient’s life. In fact, in 2023, over 5,300 euthanasia deaths were done by just 89 medical practitioners, an average of 60 deaths each in just one year. Some Canadian doctors have become experts in killing, with one doctor “administering fatal substances” to over 400 patients.

What does it say about Canadian quality of life that checking out early seems like a good option to more and more Canadians? Why would we want people like that in the US?

It might be argued that factors like the Alberta separatist movement can serve as a check on the ambitions of the Laurentian elite who run things in Ottawa. But the Alberta separatists are pretty much delusional. Reacting to Quebec separatism, the Canadian parliament passed the Clarity Act in 2000 that

established the conditions under which the Government of Canada would enter into negotiations that might lead to secession following such a vote by one of the provinces.

. . . The key points of the legislation included the following:

- Giving the House of Commons the power to decide whether a proposed referendum question was considered clear before the public vote;

- Specifically stating that any question not solely referring to secession was to be considered unclear;

- Giving the House of Commons the power to determine whether a clear majority had expressed itself following any referendum vote, implying that some sort of supermajority is required for success;

- Stating that all provinces and the indigenous peoples were to be part of the negotiations;

- Allowing the House of Commons to override a referendum decision if it felt the referendum violated any of the tenets of the Clarity Act;

- The secession of a province of Canada would require an amendment to the Constitution of Canada.

In other words, Ottawa isn't going to allow any such thing, and it can simply override any referendum in Alberta or anywhere else. The Alberta separatist movement is a feckless waste of time -- but what does this say about the Canadian national character? Why would we want to bring people like this in?

A problem I do see is that Canada seems to be working its way into becoming a failed state, which at some point will directly affect the US, and we're seeing it already in Canada's inability or unwillingness to control forest fires, which affects US air quality. It's likely that other nuisance factors from up north will increase, and at some point, some sort of coercive action may need to be taken -- but right now, the tariff strategy seems to be effective. Let Canada continue to be Canada and stew in its own juices.

More Migrant Dinghies Land In UK

Via The Sun:

HIGH above the sea near Dover, Border Force planes patrol while an army of drones watches for ­suspicious activity.

Yet beneath them, a small dinghy packed with around 30 migrants quietly traverses the world’s busiest shipping lane, slipping undetected into the shallows of nearby Samphire Hoe.

The landing on Tuesday was the second undetected vessel to hit our shores in two days.

Hours earlier on Monday, a boat carrying five migrants came ashore near Folkestone in what the Government claimed was an “isolated and rare” case. All five people aboard were detained at the scene.

That incident was the first undetected migrant landing for a year, striking a humiliating blow for the Home Office as Britain’s hapless border control descends further into farce.

Twenty-one of the passengers aboard the second dinghy were detained by cops, but at least ten more are still being hunted.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has launched an urgent investigation into how the 30-plus migrants reached Kent without being spotted by British authorities.

There's a certsin amount of kabuki theater going on over this issue:

At least five more boats are thought to have launched yesterday too, carrying upwards of 200 new migrants.

Tracking data showed French rescue boats escorting each one to British waters before they were picked up by Border Force vessels.

. . . French ships generally escort migrant dinghies to a handover point with Border Force or, in some cases, the [Royal National Lifeboat Institution], with the two nations communicating throughout.

The main problem is apparently not stopping the migrants, but heading off demonstrations by UK citizens:

The threat of arrivals in Hampshire sparked demonstrations at Gosport on Tuesday, where six people were arrested for offences including careless driving and assaulting police officers.

The last-minute change to Dover saw the taxpayer-funded coaches given a police escort away from the Gosport coast over fears they could be attacked.

Footage showed the buses surrounded by blue lights in what George Madgwick, the Reform group leader on Hampshire council, described as a motorcade more fit for a world leader.

He added: “This has to be seen to be believed. The money spent . . . this country’s broken.”

. . . Donna Jones, Hampshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner, had previously warned Border Force that Hampshire was “not prepared or set up to process” Channel migrants.

She added: “The burden on the police to deal with the arrival and potential protest activity is unsustainable.”

Home Office and RNLI boats repeatedly turned off their transponders in an apparent attempt to hide their destination from protesters.

However, the arrival of two coaches and dozens of riot police in Gosport indicated the migrants would be dropped there.

Another Normandy mega-dinghy which launched earlier this month was taken to Portsmouth, prompting an hours-long stand-off with masked Patriot Platform protesters.

Border Force officials are understood to have committed to the Gosport plan before fears that activists could block the only road in and out of the port forced them to change tactics.

So the "undetected" dinghies are tracked and escorted during their whole voyages over the Channel, and their ports and times of debarkation are carefully planned and scheduled for late night to avoid protests. Once the migrants arrive, thedy're loaded onto government-funded charter buses, which take them to migrant hotels inland.

The de facto policy appears to be that the migrants will be in the UK indefinitely, with the aim of relocating them to rural areas:

Rural areas will be asked to accept more people seeking asylum, a minister has suggested, as the government faced criticism from Conservative MPs for placing migrants in their constituencies.

Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, said small towns and the countryside may be asked to house more people crossing the Channel in small boats “as long as numbers are so high”.

His comments were made in parliament as MPs expressed concern at the chaotic procedures of his department.

Jonathan Gullis, the Conservative MP for Stoke-on-Trent North, said people seeking asylum were being “dumped on” his constituency by private contractor Serco.

. . . More than 40,000 people have crossed in small boats so far this year, including 1,800 last weekend alone, according to official figures. The government predicted in February that the numbers arriving in the UK via small boats could reach 60,000.

There doesn't seem to be any coherent plan to return migrants either to France or their home countries, nor any serious plan to deal with the fact that they are primarily young men. At this point, the UK parliamentary system is simply not dealing with this major social problem, while respecctable opinion seems incapable of even addressing the fact that it exists.

More Takes On Trump's Greenland Deal

The YouTube interview with John Hulsman,a foreign policy consultant, embedded above, is from earlier thia year; he correctly predicts the end of Keir Starmer, but more importantly, he puts the Greeland deal announced last Friday in a wider context. Trump's negotiating style, as he puts it, is to "ask for the stars and get the moon", and Trump has been doing this all along. In discussing the "framework" NATO deal announcd in January, Hulsman thinks Trump was able to negotiate the ability to develop Greenlanmd's minerals.

The current deal that was signed at the UN yesterday continues the objective Hulsman also discusses, giving the US de facto control over the territory while allowing Denmark and Greenland to claim de jure sovereignty. More importantly, as Monica Showalter points out, this is now independent of NATO.

In 1951, we entered into an agreement with Denmark allowing us to establish a base at Thule. Article XIV of that Treaty states that “This Agreement, being in implementation of the North Atlantic Treaty, shall remain in effect for the duration of the North Atlantic Treaty.” If we left NATO or it otherwise ceased to exist, we had no clear right to maintain defenses there. Nor did we have exclusive rights to ban foreign investments which posed security threats to us. In time, the treaty was inadequate to protect our interests, as Russia now had ICBMs, and Russian nuclear submarines were navigating Arctic waters. Moreover, the small population of Greenland was talking about independence, and Russian and Chinese governments were not averse to bribing them substantially in exchange for operating rights there. Our agreement was with Denmark, and it’s unclear it could bind an independent Greenland.

In other words, with the new agreement, Trump has effectively uncoupled Greenland from NATO. In his UN address yesterday, he strongly implied this was to NATO's benefit:

By expanding America’s footprint in the Arctic and North Atlantic, this deal also protects Europe in addition to America and greatly protects them. It also very much enhances NATO, which has a great leader. And Mark, I know you’re in the audience, and you are indeed a great leader, Mark Rutte, which is now growing stronger than ever before. NATO is doing things that nobody thought they would be able to do, including raising their number to 5% from 2%.

Nevertheless, NATO isn't forever, while US interests are a separate matter. Trump alluded to the potential fate of Europe, which would certaintly involve NATO, in later remarks:

It is deeply ironic that the United Nations has an entire institution, the UNESCO group of people and countries devoted to protecting cultural heritage. Yet with their ceaseless promotion of mass migration, these globalists are actively destroying the greatest cultures and most extraordinary heritage in all of history.

It's hard to avoid thinking that the UK-style parliamentary system is failing in both the UK and Canada, and potentially in other countries like France and Germany. In Canada, a longer-standing Quebec separatist movement has been joined by more recent ones in Alberta and Saskatchewan. In the UK, plans to house migrants in a former military facility near the village of Piddington have created a vocal separtist movement there:

A tiny English village has voted to leave the United Kingdom as a symbolic protest against government plans to house up to 1,200 migrants seeking asylum on a nearby military base.

Residents of Piddington, which has a population of about 350, voted overwhelmingly for secession in the nonbinding referendum. The results announced Wednesday showed 285 votes in favor of breaking away, with 26 villagers voting against.

. . . The center-left Labour Party government of Prime Minister Andy Burnham says it is making progress in processing asylum claims more quickly, so that migrants spend less time in state-sponsored accommodation, and stopping people crossing the English Channel in inflatable dinghies.

More than 41,000 people made the hazardous journey in 2025, but the number so far this year is down by more than 40% from the same period last year.

. . . “I understand the strength of feeling,” Burnham said Wednesday. “I will look at the issues being raised by the community and in the referendum, but we have to ensure that we have a fair plan” that spreads the burden of accommodating new arrivals across the country.

If Europe and Canada face political instability, it's only prudent to be aware of the contingency and plan for it; ensuring Greenland's position in the US defensive posture is a key part of such planning. Greenland was once seen as a support base to protect US convoys to Europe, but it's just as valuable as a base to attack European convoys to Canada. As I said yesterday, the timing of the Greenland announcement is remarkably close to Carney's announcement of "middle power" talks with European countries.