Canada's Ebola Quarantine Impacting Humanitarian Response

"To me, we're not stepping up in the way that we should be as a country that does have the ability to do it and changing the quarantine regulations is a low-stakes way of being able to do it."

"All the decisions that the Canadian government has decided to make over the past few months around the Ebola outbreak, none of them have been very forthright in saying, we understand that this is a global priority and as Canada we're going to step up to help in the ways that are equal to the capacities that we have in this country."

Lily-Madeleine Seguin, public health promotion advisor, Oxfam global team 

 

"[The government is] continually reviewing the measures alongside the latest evidence with international partners and will determine next steps before the existing measures are set to expire."

"[The temporary measures are not intended to eliminate all risk,] but to reduce the likelihood of importation [of Ebola], support early identification of potentially ill travellers, and therefore reduce the risk of potential spread to others in Canada." 

Karine LeBlanc, Health Canada communications adviser

Lily-Madeleine Seguin, public health promotion adviser woth Oxfam. The Canadian Press

 

Travellers returning from the Democratic Republic of Congo or from Uganda are advised by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control to self-monitor for symptoms and only if they had a high risk exposure like direct contact with bodily fluid of an infected person, or close, face-to-face contact with someone coughing, vomiting or bleeding who has the virus, should they quarantine.

 

"I'm very critical about how Canada chose to implement their public health measures", commented Mylene Ratelle, hired as a health promotion manager at Doctors Without Borders who would have remained for longer in the DRC had she not needed to quarantine for three weeks at her Montreal apartment prior to the start of the fall semester, as a professor of public health. She faulted the lack of scientific basis for strict border measures enacted by Canada.

 

People who have been in casual contact with Ebola patients are not generally candidates to contract the disease. It is through direct contact with bodily fluids, such as blood, vomit and semen that spreads the virus. The Canadian government's mandatory 21-day quarantine set to expire, has been condemned by many humanitarian aid workers. The measures had been announced in May at the time of the FIFA World Cup which had strict rules for co-hosting countries. 

 

At the time, Canada's minister of health stated "It's not a question of science", but rather that of protecting people from the lasting trauma of past outbreaks when people from around the world converge en masse at such world events. Doctors Without Borders were critical of the measures that resulted in a dozen Canadians identified with valuable expertise cancelling their assignments as a result of the quarantine measures. MSF's Ebola response in the DRC had twenty-three Canadians in all, taking part. 

 

The Globe and Mail

 

"To me, it's quite egregious", said Roojin Habibi, research director of global health law at the  Global Strategy Lab, University of Ottawa and York University. The travel restrictions, she held, ignore expert guidance from the World Health Organization which stated that blanket travel restrictions are based not on science, but fear.

 

Canadian humanitarian aid workers are also concerned that an extension of the expiring regulations affecting Canadians and permanent residents of Canada returning from the DRC, Uganda or South Sudan could be detrimental to the response of the outbreak with their ability to respond stifled by the long quarantine period. This outbreak has been identified by the World Health Organization as the swiftest growing Ebola outbreak in history, as well as the deadliest. Africa's public health agency has reported over 2,500 deaths from over 5,000 infections.

 

Aid workers are also critical of the $8 million committed by the current Liberal government in support of the fight against the outbreak, particularly compared to the Conservative-led government's response in 2014 of $110 million related to financial assistance given by Canada to West Africa during that country's Ebola outbreak. 

 

The Globe and Mail

 

Canada's "Five-Alarm Fire"

"The numbers make it clear that Canada's founders and entrepreneurs are leaving in droves -- and they are taking the future value they will generate with them."

"Not only is it a 'today' problem. But this is a leak in one of our most valuable resources, and the compounding effects over time, I think, can be incredibly devastating for the Canadian economy."

"We talk a lot about positioning, we talk a lot about sovereignty, about making ourselves stronger internally."

"If the U.S. is raising walls and raising tariffs and doing more and more to put America first, I think the smartest response for Canada is to make Canada the obvious place for the next 517 founders to stay and build here." 

Lucy Hargreaves, co-founder Build Canada business advocacy group 

Clockwise from left, Ilya Sutskever, University of Toronto (OpenAI); Garrett Camp, University of Calgary (Uber); Chris Olah, University of Toronto (Anthropic); Jeff Skoll, University of Toronto (eBay); and Elon Musk, Queen’s University (SpaceX).

 

Canada is losing its best and brightest entrepreneurs as they pull up stakes after getting their education in their place of birth and head to greener pastures. Those greener pastures in the world of tech exist in the United States. While tariff threats issued to Canada from the current Washington administration  has moved the Liberal government to attempt diversification and rescue from Canada's traditional reliance on coasting along with the American economy as Canada's largest trading partner by far, no one in public office appears to much notice that tech brain drain.

 

A number of tech entrepreneurs, politicians and economists this week have weighed the data demonstrating just how large the problem of siphoning Canada's bright minds off to a place where a larger economy, more lenient tax rates and greater entrepreneurial opportunities exist, and finally that problem gained some needed focus. There are at least 517 U.S.-based tech firms, according to recent figures, with Canadian founders; entrepreneurs educated in Canada but high-tailing it to the U.S. Together they have raised over US$400 billion.

 

The pace of innovators who leave Canada for the United States doubled since 2023, with U.S. tech giants on a hiring spree to fulfill their ambitions surrounding artificial intelligence. Previously, just over 20 founders left for the U.S. annually. That figure rose to 60 in 2023, and 93 in 2024. 88 percent of those founders graduated from Canadian universities, University of Waterloo, University of Toronto and McGill University among them. 

 

 

Open AI co-founder Ilya Sutskever who attended University of Toronto, and Uber founder Garrett Camp who was raised in Calgary, are among them. Space X's Elon Musk, who has Canadian citizenship, as well as Anthropic's Chris Olah and eBay's Jeff Skoll are others involved in the exodus. Efforts to retain its most innovative people and ideas from moving to the U.S. where entrepreneurs can take advantage of the much larger capital investment pool and more committed pro-business policies, have failed to succeed. 

 

Drawing from the Dominion List, a database of U.S.-based companies with founders born or educated in Canada, Waterloo-based tech investor Jesse Rodgers studied the latest numbers indicating the number of founders who had left for American cities. His blog post surfaced recently just as voices began to weigh in on social media. According to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, this loss of talent is "driving entrepreneurs out of Canada with taxes, red tape and inflation", even as the Liberal government gives "handouts bailouts, and carveouts to the club of corporate insiders". 

 

Where observers are aligned, it is with the belief that Canada is losing strategic talent and ideas to the U.S. -- with less agreement on the reasons why, counterbalances the reality. Some are convinced that it is the huge pool of investors available just south of the border, hubs like New York City and Silicon Valley, in particular. Others are convinced of a lack of pro-business policies in Canada to compensate for the lack of scale in comparison to the U.S.

 

Ms. Hargreaves beliees that more generous capital gains taxes or reduced income taxes on top earners could help the retention of entrepreneurs. Andre Charoo, management partner at Maple VC, a San Francisco-based venture capital fund, feels that entrepreneurs simply move to the U.S. to be in the company of other successful people. Canada, says Mr. Charoo, lacks the density of people striving to build the next $1-billion success story.

 

"We produce some of the most ambitious people in the world, but ambitious people want to be around other ambitious people", he stated. Educated at the University of Toronto, Charoo helped launch the Canadian division of Uber, but moved in the early 2000s to California for the opportunities that could advantage him there. Of the 517 companies that Canadian and Canadian-educated funders started in the U.S., 287 are based in San Francisco, while New York hosts the next most, at 61. 

 

 

Astronomical Discoveries: Fastest Star in the Milky Way Orbiting Black Hole

"Decades carefully tracking stars orbiting our galaxy's central black hole, Sagittarius A*, have led to this  breakthrough discovery."

"Because it orbits so close to Sagittarius A*, S301 opens a new window to the fundamental properties of space-time in this extreme black-hole environment."

Reinhard Genzal, 2020 Nobel Laureate in physics, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Germany 

 

"What is special about this star is that it's orbiting Sagittarius A* on a very tight orbit, taking just 8.7 years to complete it."

"[The star gets roughly as close to the black hole as Saturn gets to our Sun, which is] unprecedented."

Felix Mang, PhD student, co-author of new study/discovery 

Dozens of stars race around the Milky Way’s giant black hole at high speeds.  ESO/L. Calçada

 

The fastest star in the Milky Way which zooms at 25,000 kilometres per second around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, has been discovered by astronomers. Named S301, the star orbits precipitously close to the black hole -- so much so that scientists are convinced that its close study may shed light on this cosmic monster that is the black hole at the centre of our galaxy. And in the process, enable them to validate -- or not -- Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. 

 

S301, two billion times fainter than the star Betelgeuse in our night sky, led the team of astronomers to make use of the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope located in the Chilean desert. The presence of the star first came to notice in 2023, and has been tracked ever since, in its orbit. The star travels around 25,000 kilometres per second when it approaches closest to the irresistible gravity pull of the black star.

The star S301 orbits the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*, in this annotated image from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope.

 

Its trajectory is 100,000 times speedier than that of a commercial airplane; over eight percent greater than the speed of light. It is known to be the fastest star that has ever been detected in the Milky Way galaxy. Among scientists, it is believed that S301 once was a partner of a binary star system, torn asunder through the irresistibly strong pull of the black hole. That theory had S301 trapped in the gravity of the black hole while its partner star was blasted outward with sufficient force to entirely take its leave of the galaxy.

 

In the year 2031, the star will make its next-closest approach to the black hole, at which time astronomers will plan another intense focus of the star's activity in the hope that data they collect from two completed orbits may give them the opportunity to determine the star's trajectory with sufficient precision that the black hole's rotation could be measured -- for as with most space objects, black holes are thought to spin.

 

According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, a spinning black hole would drag space-time along with it, twisted in a manner that would affect and alter the orbits of surrounding stars. The astronomers anticipate that within the next ten years they will have the opportunity to study S301 for the direct purpose of measuring, for the first time, the spin of the black hole.

 

"Without this star, we would need to measure the motion of other stars for several more decades to get anywhere close to measuring the spin of the black hole", French astronomer and study co-author Juan Osorno explained, in reference to the study published in Nature. 

 

The image shows all known stars in the Galactic Center orbiting the central massive black hole Sgr A*. The central region is dominated by young, hot stars (blue), and a couple of cooler stars (orange/red). One of the cooler stars, S301, is approaching Sgr A* very closely on its elliptical orbit (red), about the distance Sun to planet Saturn. Sgr A* itself is surrounded by hot plasma, the light of which is warped due to the black hole’s strong gravity.   © MPE

 

Tactical Surrender: World Professional Association for Transgender Health

"WPATH [World Professional Association for Transgender Health] now agrees that pediatric transgender medicine is marked by 'medical and scientific uncertainty."

"Yet for years, WPATH presented its guidelines as an  unquestionable medical standard of care."

"The social and scientific costs of questioning their recommendations were steep and could be career-ending."

"For 10+ years doctors have been told WPATH's is the only way." 

Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) 

 

"SEGM's characterization of WPATH's legal position is a clear misrepresentation of an established legal distinction by the courts."

"[Our dedication to our mission and the served patient population] remains unwavering."

"[We are a nonprofit] dedicated to promoting science-based medical care, education, research and public policy in transgender health." 

"[Our Standards of Care] articulate a professional consensus about the psychiatric, psychological, medical and surgical management of transgender people."

"That transgender health care is an area of intense medical debate does not entitle Plaintiffs to prevent individuals and organizations like WPATH from free speech aimed at contributing to that debate."

"Many governments and organizations, including New Zealand, Canada, and some U.S. States and the American Academy of Pediatrics, agree that the evidence supports SOC-8 [Standards of Care-8 updated by WPATH]." 

World Professional Association for Transgender Health

 

"Parents have been told that the WPATH approach is not optional, but medically necessary and lifesaving."

"[WPATH] has aggressively promoted that approach, including by suppressing and stigmatizing alternatives. I think it's disingenuous at best for WPATH to now frame its recommendations as merely one opinion in a legitimate debate."

Leor Sapir senior fellow, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research 

 

 

Within the throes of a legal battle with the Trump administration, the U.S. transgender health organization appears to have made a shift of significance in its guidelines; the very guidelines that platform gender-care policies in North America. According to a new legal filing, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health now claims that its guidance to doctors represents one area in a matter of "intense medical debate". 

 

The organization has brought forward a dismissal of lawsuit motion that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission brought against WPATH, by now claiming that its Standards of Care that have been so influential up to the present are not in fact presented as "assertions of fact, but rather opinions" ,that have been based on cited scientific studies.

 

WPATH claims its opinions are "non-actionable", protected by the First Amendment; that it is doctors who have based their decision-making on WPATH's guidelines who are in point of fact the bearers of "independent responsibility for their own advice", according to the legal filing by WPATH. In response, the organization's critics regard these arguments as a "remarkable humbling in attitude". 

 

They are, in essence, shrugging off their own responsibility in presenting their guidelines as the final word in response to gender dysphoria. Their having framed those guidelines as a matter of dire necessity to respect the confused gender choices made by underage children meriting instant responses of pediatric decision making in hormone-arresting maturation of pre-puberty adolescents and even 'corrective' surgeries now rests on the consciences of the doctors responding to the authority of their original guidelines. 

"[WPATH] went to great lengths to convince insurance companies, doctors and parents that its standard of care was the 'settled science'."

"And now it's claiming that the standard of care is worth no more than a student essay in a high school newspaper."

Andrew Ferguson, chair, U.S. Federal Trade Commission  

The initial development of WPATH's guidelines in its Standards of Care date from 1979. A recent 2022 update was signed off by over 100 co-authors. Guidelines for gender-affirming care in Canada have been driven in alignment with WPATH recommendations. In its position statement in support of an affirming approach to care, the Canadian Paediatric Society refers to the recommendations within SOC-8. Those are recommendations described as internationally accepted standards of care. A chapter dedicated to adolescents states the "medical necessity of treatment and care is clearly recognized for the many people who experience dissonance between their sex assigned at birth and their gender identity". 

WPATH describes itself as a non-profit "dedicated to promoting science-based medical care, education, research and public policy in transgender health." Photo by Adobe Stock

In the original document WPATH offers “suggested minimum ages” for a number of irreversible surgical procedures for minors, such as: 

 14+ years old for cross-sex hormones 

 15+ years old for double mastectomies 

 16+ years old for breast implants, facial feminisation surgery 

 17+ years old for metoidioplasty, orchiectomy, vaginoplasty, hysterectomy, fronto-orbital     remodelling  

18+ years old for phalloplasty.  

The decision to remove all age requirements (apart from the phalloplasty) was taken despite there being no new evidence to support that recommendation. 

Genspect 

 

Britain's National Health Service took the initiative to question its own earlier position that the effects of puberty blockers are wholly reversible. Doctors, SOC-8 adherents are now advised, may decide to depart from WPATH's guidance in reflection of a patient's "unique anatomic, social or psychological situation", led by a research study  or other reasons. "These departures should be recognized as such, explained to the patient and documented for quality patient care and legal protection."

 

The Federal Trade Commission's lawsuit (along with Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas) claims that WPATH made "false, misleading or unsubstantiated" statements regarding the necessity, effectiveness and safety of puberty blockers, hormones, and sex-change surgeries. WPATH asserts, in seeking to squash the complaint that the "core deceptive statements" have no  presence in SOC-8 and thus were paraphrased from other quotes based on citations by the group quoted in published research.

 

According to WPATH, the deceptive statements are "non-actionable opinions about subjects and scientific uncertainty", reads the WPATH motion, in that the plaintiffs "fail to allege a single deceptive statement by WPATH, much less a statement to consumers". "SOC-8 does not tell doctors what to say, much less how to mislead". "Plaintiffs", they go on, "seek to brand one side of scientific debate as 'deceptive' without even considering the science". 

 

The evidence is of such low certainty, it is impossible to determine whether the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in children and teens help or harm, according to Canadian researchers who last year published two major reviews. For its part, WPATH claims the Federal Trade Commission and other plaintiffs are "attempting to insert themselves in the middle of this medical debate and silence those with whom they disagree".  

"All clinical guideline recommendations are evidence informed, but opinion based."

"The guidelines for hypertension, for diabetes, for Crohn's disease. Pick a disease, pick a clinical scenario, pick a preventative health issue."

"An 'opinion' in this context does not imply ill-considered loose thoughts or brain droppings, but specifically refers to a genuinely subjective judgement that cannot be proven true or false and thus cannot be sanctioned merely because he government disagrees with it."

"[However, a legitimate debate is to be had over whether WPATH's opinions are supported by the evidence]."

Dr. Laura Targownik, professor of medicine, University of Toronto 

 

The Average Russian's Confidence in Vladimir Putin's Russia

"Drones are flying. Things are burning down. Nervousness is growing. And people's everyday wisdom may be kicking in that they need to have cash under their pillow and not somewhere in banks where it may never be returned."

"For some banks this really is a problem. They didn't expect this and they invested all the cash elsewhere, and yet people are coming and taking out half a trillion rubles a month."

Former (anonymous) finance official, Russia

 

"It means people have no trust in the Russian banking system or in the Russian financial system."

"This is all a consequence of the fear that the government will do something with the banking system, that it could nationalize deposits."

"I would not exclude that the authorities could impose limits on withdrawals."

Alexandra Prokopenko, former advisor, Russian Central Bank

Russian banks have been bleeding cash each day (Picture: EPA)

 

First half of August: $3.4 billion (286.4 billion roubles) withdrawn in a span of just fourteen days.

July: $7.3 billion pulled from commercial accounts, marking the single highest monthly withdrawal total of the calendar year.

June: $4.5 billion removed as initial drone disruptions against critical logistics hubs began to escalate.

Cumulative 2026 figure: Over $32 billion (2.5 trillion roubles) siphoned out of the formal banking architecture since January 1.

 

"Beyond physical disruptions, the driving force behind the liquidity drain is an intense, pervasive rumour mill regarding the Kremlin’s plans for private savings."

"As the war of attrition drags on, the financial demands of sustaining a military outfit numbering over a million active personnel, alongside funding defence contractors, wounded-in-action payouts, and death benefits, are burning through Russia's state budget."

"Russia’s Ministry of Finance is operating under a widening federal deficit that standard taxation and energy export revenues can no longer comfortably cover."

"With foreign reserves frozen in Western clearinghouses and access to international capital markets blocked by sanctions, Moscow must fund its war expenditures entirely through domestic borrowing, sovereign wealth drawdowns, and money creation."

"In this environment, fears have mounted among ordinary Russians that the Kremlin will inevitably resort to extraordinary measures to tap into retail bank deposits."

First Post summary

Billions are disappearing from Russia's banking system, as Russians display their penchant for economic survival against a backdrop of Moscow's floundering 'special military operation' which was meant to see the great Russian military swoop into defenceless Ukraine to liberate it from its 'neo-Nazi' government, bowing to the applause of grateful Ukrainian citizens and just incidentally picking up great regional swaths of its neighbour in the interests of rewarding Russian President Vladimir Putin's fixation on restoring Soviet-era influence, power and command of its neighbours' resources, from land to population to natural resources. 

 

Who could foresee that Ukraine's government had its own plans that included staunch national sovereignty and a commitment to democracy in a country that prided itself on its peoples' defiance of the invader, and a national identity that was capable of coping with the stress of invasion by an enemy that recognized no civilized internationally respected conventions of war. Ukranians, prepared to improvise, to cope with scarcity and danger in support of their government, their innovative military, their proud history of struggle against all odds. 

 

Above all, the courage of its smaller military service, and the improvisation of new technologies enabling them to hold their own. In the event, challenging Russia on its own  turf, informing Russians there are no free lunches in Ukraine for them.

 

In the first two weeks of August, close to $3.4 billion was withdrawn, in addition to the $7.3 billion that Russians withdrew in July and over $4.5 billion in June; figures  from the Russian Central Bank. In the first year of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, such withdrawals were recognized as a problem; at this juncture in the war total withdrawals this year are overtaking and doubling the 2022/23 withdrawals, according to Taras Skvortsov, senior executive at Sberbank, the largest retail financial institution in Russia.

 

Both Mr. Skvortsov and another former senior Russian finance official have stated that these withdrawals have led to liquidity problems -- with the financial sector already strained by increasing bad debts in the wake of a government lending boom to ramp up military output -- the financial sector is being overstretched. As pointed out by former adviser to the Russian Central Bank, Alexandra Prokopenko, these withdrawals are a reflection of the atmosphere of fear growing deeper within the Russian public. 

  

Russians pull billions from banks fearing Kremlin will seize savings for war        AP Photo

 

 The situation is not a new occasion during which Russians express their doubts over their government's decision-making in imposing on them a violent conflict with a neighbour. During the initial two weeks of the invasion the Russian banking system lost $23 billion and even then banks seemed imperilled by depositors and businesses lined up with the intention of emptying their accounts. Then the government addressed the drain through the imposition of strict capital controls aligned alongside sharply raised interest rates.

 

The concerns over economic survival go beyond that of the Russian public, as big business also now seeks as well to move their money out of Russian regulatory reach, while anxiety increases over asset seizure potentials. Over $9.4 billion was transferred in the second quarter of 2026 out of Russia, according to data from Russia's Central Bank. 

 

The government's plans to raise money to finance the war through the issuance of state bonds have been undermined by the withdrawals. After all, Russians, whether individuals or corporations, frantically engaged in protecting their cash assets by removing them from the possibility of the government's octopus reach into private property, are highly unlikely to voluntarily part with their cash at a time of severely reduced trust, to buy state bonds. 

 

There is ample reason for distrust of the government's intentions. A nationalization drive to target wealthy Russians has been intensified; prosecutors confirmed that last year $51.5 billion in assets were seized in 2025. Prior to that, in June the state confiscated $7.6 billion with links to Vadim Moshkovich, Russian agricultural tycoon, representing the largest seizure since 2022 marking the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

 

Smoke billows from the burning Wildberries warehouses following a Ukrainian drone attack, August 16. Stringer/REUTERS

  

"Each month there is a big outflow."

"If the trend continues things are not going to get better."

 Taras Slvortsov. senior executive, Sberbank, Russia

Traditional U.S. Alliances: Now You See Them ... Soon You Won't

"Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea, I am not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military Exercises with South Korea."

"These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America [as usual], but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful."

U.S. President Donald J. Trump 

Chinese President Xi Jinping made a rare visit to North Korea to meet with Kim Jong Un, where the two moved closer to improving economic ties despite North Korea strengthening its relationship with Russia. Still from video, CBC News

 

Mr. Trump's great good friend saw to it that Pyongyang test-fired a ballistic missile recently over the Sea of Japan, warning it was prepared to respond to the annual joint military exercises shared by the United States and South Korea as practise runs in preparation for a potentially possible attack by North Korea on the South. All of the region has been made nervously expectant by the obvious militancy of Kim Jong Un, leading North Korea on a military and nuclear arms trajectory that traditional U.S. allies like South Korea, the Philippines, Japan and others view as threatening, along with that of Beijing, North Korea's 'big brother'.

 

There is also no secret about an alliance between Russia, North Korea, China and Iran. Much less the fact that Russia's war on Ukraine has been aided by the presence of North Korean troops. All four of those countries are anything but friends of the Democratic West. And while the U.S. military views Russia, North Korea and China as volatile military enemies, and is at war, directed by their president, with Iran, this tangled version of friends and allies versus military belligerents and adversaries of all that the West values is as puzzling as it is nonsensical.

 

A museum in North Korea honors soldiers who have fought for Russia

 

 The U.S. president wrote on his Truth Social site that he had ordered the Pentagon to scale back "inappropriate and hostile" military drills with South Korea, mere hours prior to the drills taking place. The exercises, according to South Korean officials, proceeded as planned. South Korea officials, in fact, expressed the hope that the personal relationship Mr. Trump speaks of with the South's political nemesis could yield a resumption of talks, and with that, some forward movement in reconciliation between the two Koreas.

 

While U.S. allies in East Asia cringe over displays of weapons' technical capabilities forever moving forward and displayed with militant pride by Pyongyang, along with the hermit nation's growing alignment with Vladimir Putin's territorially aggressive agenda, not to mention North Korea's historical mentorship by China, the annual drills offered a notional reassurance of having the support of the United States should the situation of military threats continue to accelerate.

 

"I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, 'No thanks!'." That disinclination to become embroiled in a conflict outside their own internal interest zone appears to have sealed and delivered a verdict that Mr. Trump has applied elsewhere, when allies have failed to join America's spontaneous military decisions with no outreach before conflict has been launched with the heads of governments later expected to lend themselves to the American enterprise of war.

 

U.S. army soldiers are seen during joint military exercises with South Korea in Yeoncheon, South Korea, in March 2025. (Ahn Young-joon/The Associated Press)

 

The normal 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, designed to prepare the region for a potential war with North Korea, proceeded, though to "substantially reduced" impetus. That, reflecting the fact that when Mr. Trump decided he no longer wished the United States under his rule to continue with the drills, it was too late to cancel them, but Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth was ordered to reduce them.

 

Seoul's presidential office assured the press that it remained in "close coordination" over the exercises with Washington, expressing the "hopes that the friendly relationship between the leaders of the United States and North Korea will lead to meaningful dialogue". That's called diplomacy. Or looking on the bright side of things as expressed by Monty Python, in a skit somewhat resembling his tongue-in-cheek, sardonic episodes of portraying human lunacy.

 

There are some 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea as a show of support for the country's defences since the 1950-53 armistice that ended the Korean War. Tellingly, American commitments to security in East Asia now appear fairly wobbly given U.S. President Trump's repeated criticism of what was once universally thought of as rock-solid alliances.

 

South Korean soldiers watching a joint live-fire exercise with the U.S. Army in Pocheon, South Korea, last year.   SeongJoon Cho / Bloomberg via Getty Images file

 

WWII Ukrainian SS Galicia Division

"Let’s be clear about the eight men for whom the University of Alberta maintains named endowments. They fought for the Waffen-SS, an armed wing of the Nazi Party which was declared a criminal organization at the Nuremberg trials because of its role in war crimes. Their division was implicated in brutal wartime massacres of civilians, including one atrocity in which Polish women and children were locked inside buildings and burned alive."

"It should publish a complete list of all endowments honouring a Waffen-SS member, together with a timeline for resolving them. It should pursue renaming, seek legal variations where necessary, and return to court if required. The university must make clear that those who fought in service of the Nazis have no place of honour at a Canadian university."

Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, Bernie Farber, Edmonton Journal 

Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler inspects volunteers of the Ukrainian Waffen SS division during the Second World War. Library and Archives Canada is now reviewing whether to release the names of alleged Nazi war criminals who fled to Canada after the war. (File photo)

 

 The Waffen SS Galicia comprised of Ukrainian volunteers and overseen by Nazi SS groups were implicated in WWII war crimes; Jewish groups as well as the Polish government denounced the Ukrainian volunteer group for its part in murdering civilians, as well as for massacres it was involved with. The Nazis made use of the division in Slovakia to crush a national uprising; another condemnation for war crimes committed by the group. 

 

In the wake of receiving a legal permission to proceed with dissolving a research trust in the name of Ukrainian SS veteran Yaroslav Hunka who received accolades in Parliament during a visit to Canada by Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2023 when a standing ovation honoured the misconception that he was a war hero by Western standards by fighting against the Soviet occupation of Ukraine, at a time when Russia was viewed as an ally alongside the U.K., U.S. and Canada, the University of Alberta announced it would go no further in expunging Ukraine-centred research funding.

 

Yaroslav Hunka (giving a thumbs up) during applause in the Canadian Parliament, September 22, 2023. Photo: YouTube/CBC News: The National

 

The university planned to retain eight other endowments involved with Waffen-SS soldiers, claiming it would be too costly in time and legal fees to seek court approval for termination of the endowments. Researchers with the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center. a Toronto-based Holocaust research organization, totaled a list of 12 endowments at the University of Alberta with a value to the university of $2.2 million in funding, linked to Nazi-allied individuals during WWII in Ukraine. 

 

"This is dirty money and it's unconscionable they are continuing with this. It's beyond despicable", 84-year-old Andy Reti, a child survivor of the Holocaust stated in condemnation of the university's position. An alternative, he felt reasonable was that the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the university should donate the endowment funding of he Waffen-SS to the Salvation Army so that something positive could result from the untenably tainted funds. 

 

Senior director at the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, Jaime Kierzner-Roberts, stated that her group had called on a number of occasions for the university to divest all of the Nazi-linked endowments, including one named for Peter Savaryn, another SS-Waffen member, who had in time become chancellor of the university. In 2023, however, the office of the Governor General expressed its deep regret for having awarded the Order of Canada to Savaryn in 1987. In the event, at revelations of his wartime activities and connections, in consequence of which the Order was revoked. 

 

In its remediation defence, the University of Alberta revealed its intention to spend $100,000 to "deepen scholarship and education about the Galicia Division and other complex and difficult aspects of 20th-century history". None of which can expunge the reality that the university had accepted funds from the estate of Volodymyr Kubijovyc, a Nazi collaborator who had helped create the Waffen-SS Galicia, and was as well an advocate for ethnic cleansing to create an independent Ukraine without the presence of Jews or Poles.

 

Parade of recruits of the Waffen SS “Galicia” Division in Lviv. In the foreground is the head of the Military Administration, Col. Bisanz. July 18, 1943. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

 

Members of the Waffen SS Galicia are regarded as heroes -- who had fought against Soviet forces -- among nationalist Ukrainian Canadians. In summer day camps for Ukrainian children in Canada, this kind of folkhero history is taught to the campers, where they can also view commemorative statuary celebrating Waffen-SS WWII members for their courageous heroism in confronting and killing Red Army servicemen. Criticism of these heroes, they aver, represents Russian misinformation.

 

Critics of the volunteer SS battalion point out that in volunteering themselves to fight with the Nazis, Ukrainians were essentially freeing  up German soldiers to enable them to be redirected to fighting against the British, Canadian,and American soldiers, at that time advancing toward Berlin. Following the end of the war, the International Military Tribunal declared the SS a criminal organization, with the inclusion of Waffen-SS units. 

 

Ukrainians dressed in SS Galicia Division uniforms march past graves during a re-burial ceremony at the SS Galicia Division cemetery near the village of Chervone, Ukraine, in 2013. Photo by Efrem Lukatsky/AP/File