Hoekstra, Endearing Himself to Canadians

President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, third from right, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Pete Hoekstra, U.S. Ambassador to Canada, listen on the sidelines of the G7 Summit, Monday, June 16, 2025, in Kananaskis, Canada. | Mark Schiefelbein/AP

I'm disappointed that I came to Canada — a Canada that it is very, very difficult to find Canadians who are passionate about the American-Canadian relationship."

You ran a campaign where it was anti-American, elbows up, me too. You know, that was an anti-American campaign. That has continued. That's disappointing.

 “This Canadian government, It is so nice of them to put out a national emergency that the U.S. ambassador is again speaking. Watch out!”

“I’ve got suggestions that I think can get it restarted but it’s not going to be easy.” 

“Here, I’ll just get myself in trouble. I go around the country and people will say, ‘Pete, you just don’t understand why we’re so mad about the 51st state.’ Yeah, you’re right. I don’t.”

“I’m sorry. That does not happen in the United States of America. You do not come into America and start running political ads — government-funded political ads — and expect that there will be no consequences or reaction from the United States of America and the Trump administration.”

“As far as we can tell, it has never happened in America before. And if Canada wants to insert itself and create a new precedent that you’re going to participate in our electoral politics through advertising targeting the president of the United States and his policies … I would suggest that you seriously consider whether that is the best way to try to achieve your objectives in the United States of America.”

"Canadians staying home, that's their business, you know. I don't like it, but if that's what they want to do, it's fine. They want to ban American alcohol. That's fine."

"There are reasons why the president and some of his team referred to Canada as being mean and nasty to deal with, OK, because of some of those steps."

U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra  

The U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra speaks during an event at the Halifax Chamber of Commerce in Halifax on Sept. 18. (Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press)

 

"I don’t do ‘diplomatic speak’ very well. I think when they listen to what I have to say, they know exactly what my viewpoint is. And they may disagree with it, but at least they understand where I’m coming from and where the United States of America is coming from.”

"It’s not about me, OK. Donald Trump did not tell me to go to Canada and become liked. Matter of fact, I think he would have said ‘If you go to Canada and you’re liked, it probably means that you’re not doing your job.’"

"I’m not running a campaign here for Pete Hoekstra. And I wouldn’t even try to, because the media made up their mind long before I got here about what they were going to say about a Trump ambassador to Canada." 

"That’s fine. You’re a sovereign country. Your defense relationship and stance with the United States, that is a decision you make."

"We’re going to fix the energy issue for the United States of America.We’re open to doing it together. Canada has to decide whether that’s what they want."

U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra  

U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra walks to a Fourth of July party at Lornado, the residence of the ambassador from the United States, in Ottawa, on July 4, 2025. | Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP

 

In his relentless campaign to convince Canadians that the trade impasse between Canada and the United States and the ongoing threats of tariff punishments meted out by an irascible American president, are really deserving of Canadian appreciation for the position of the United States in righting a 'wrong' long done the economic behemoth by other countries' penchant for traditionally depending on the good nature of Americans to continue milking them while failing to adequately compensate America for dependence on its singular power to keep the world safe, and being content with their trade agreements that invariably it is charged by Mr. Trump, cheat the U.S. out of its due with huge trade imbalances, Pete Hoekstra has made one charged statement too many for Canadians to digest.

 

Just the contratemps over the Gordie Howe International Bridge alone was enough to make Canadians howl with fury with the formal announcement from Mr. Hoekstra's statement:  "Today we welcome the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge to traffic between Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, adding new capacity to one of the busiest and most economically significant border crossings between the United States and Canada. President Trump made the opening possible and has consistently prioritized a safer, more secure, and more prosperous North America."

 

In fact, Donald J. Trump refused to allow the bridge to open until Canada succumbed to his demands: "The original Deal on the Bridge, which was terribly negotiated by a previous Administration, no longer stands. We changed the terms of the Deal so that the United States of America now gets 50% of the Profit." The original agreement was between Michigan and Canada, that the total cost of the Bridge was to be paid by Canada, with tolls thereafter going to pay off Canada's debt, after which any toll profit would be shared 50% with Michigan, as well as offering the state half-ownership of the bridge.

 

The $6.4 billion Canada paid for the bridge construction made no impression on Mr. Trump, claiming that Canada 'owed' the U.S. profits realized from tolls. Only when Canada agreed to the extortionist demands made by Mr. Trump would he permit the bridge to be opened. So much for the magnanimity of performance in making 'the opening possible', mentioned in the Ambassadorial report. As for a 'more prosperous North America', that should be rectified to a more prosperous America; Canada and Mexico, part of the continent of North America are being beggared by Mr. Trump's unappeasable appetite for tariffs. 

 

 

Top: They wore red and plaid, they carried signs and flags, they chanted “elbows up”. Hundreds gathered in Nathan Phillips Square to protest President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about Canada becoming the 51st state at Toronto City Hall in Toronto. March 22, 2025. Bottom: A sign is placed in front of the American whiskey section at a B.C. Liquor Store before top selling American made products are to be removed from shelves as a demonstration for media in Vancouver, B.C., Sunday, Feb. 2, 2025. | Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images; Ethan Cairns/The Canadian Press via AP

 

Little wonder than that over 120,000 Canadians signed a petition of removal for U.S. Ambassador Peter Hoekstra, whose insulting, demeaning, patronizing and controlling messaging has managed to offend all of Canada's provincial premiers and the Canadian public. Leading many Canadians who would normally vacation in the United States, to cancel any such plans for the foreseeable future. Most premiers' moves to remove U.S. alcohol from provincial liquor shops had the support of the greater public, while infuriating the Trump administration. The whopping tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, softwood and vehicles have led to the loss of tens of thousands of Canadian manufacturing jobs.

 

Mr. Hoekstra's volatile tenure has brought to Canada first-hand the implacable volatility of the American president in in-your-face entitlements amidst Canada put-downs, top of which is the occasional reference to Canada as the 51st U.S. state. Little wonder that the petition  accuses Mr. Hoekstra of normalizing "the Trump administration's threats to annex Canada as the 51st state". This is an effort led by ordinary Canadians, calling for Pete Hoekstra to be declared persona non grata. Once the petition has  been closed to further signatures by November, the document is set to be introduced to the House of Commons for a Parliamentary vote. 

 

The proposed agreement surrounding the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge connecting Windsor, Ont., to Detroit, was released amid escalated tariff threats by U.S. President Donald Trump. Still from video, CBC News

 

Palestinian Victimhood on Full Display

"The popular view of the Nakba presented by the Canadian Human Rights Museum falls short of the facts regarding events in Palestine following the U.N. partition vote of 1947."

"[Palestinian displacement was partly the result of] weak leadership and military unpreparedness [of the Arab nations who were at war with the newly founded nation of Israel]." 

"[Arabized Jewish refugees who fled conflict in the 1940s were welcomed in Israel and assimilated, while Arab refugees were treated by Arab countries where they lived in refugee camps as] symbols of the heartlessness and murderous intent of the Jews."

"Jewish presence [in Iraq as example] was virtually extinguished in just a few years. Those who fled to Israel were eventually absorbed, given Israeli citizenship, and began to play important parts in Israeli life."

"There was neither desire nor expectation that they would return to Iraq, unlike the desires and expectations of the Palestine Arab refugees in 1948."

David Bercuson and Logan Jaspers, Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy  

Aristotle Foundation report

 

Authors David Bercuson and Logan Jaspers produced a study for the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, beginning with a detailed history of the causes and effects of the Israeli-Arab war of 1948 when the nascent Jewish state was attacked by the combined militaries of its Middle East neighbours, with the intention of destroying the state before it was entrenched, on the basis that land once consecrated to Islam could not host or revert to any other religious communities. Islam, on the other hand, expunged the ancient ancestral indigeneity of Jews in lands once their own long before Islam came into being.

 

With the re-creation of the State of Israel in 1948, hundreds of thousands of both Jews and Arabs were forced from their homes; in the case of Jews, living in Arab and Muslim countries in North Africa and the Middle East there was forcible exile, and expropriation of properties from lands Jews had lived in for millennia. The Arabs who called themselves Palestinians came mostly from Transjordan and Egypt in the last century seeking economic opportunities in the area that hosted Jewish, Christian and Muslim populations whose total numbers were relatively sparse. When the UN in 1947 wrestled with the concept of Partition apportioning a major share of the territory to Jordan, then dividing the 1/3 that was left for Jews and for Arabs, the Jewish Committee accepted, the Arabs did not.

 

The Aristotle Foundation report focuses on the detailed history, commissioned after the Human Rights museum based in Winnipeg had faced a storm of controversy over its decision to host and display an exhibit focused on the displacement of Arab Palestinians with the declaration of Israeli nationhood. That declaration inspired an instant response from Israel's neighbours, a military invasion meant to destroy the possibility that Jews could return to their heritage. Palestinians were promised by the leaders of the invading Arab armies they could return, once Israel's presence was demolished. 

Aristotle Foundation report

 

The Nakba exhibit, according to its critics, focuses on the plight of Palestinian refugees, totally ignoring and  failing to include a similar experience of 800,000 Jews forcibly evacuated from their homes in Muslim and Arab countries, displaced during the conflict. Arab refugees, the authors of the report, point out, were treated by the Arab countries they fled to as "symbols of the heartlessness and murderous intent of the Jews", creating a lasting disparity between how the communities of Arabs and the Jews each view their experience.

 

Years after the initial conflict which failed to dislodge Jews from their homeland, leading the Arab armies to nurse their wounded expectations by declaring their defeat a 'nakba' (catastrophe), 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes seeking refuge in various Arab nations. The reasons were various; some historians claim many fled in response to the violence Arab civilians faced. Jewish paramilitary forces were alleged to have killed some 100 villagers in the Palestinian village of Deir Hassin. There were Palestinian leaders who claimed the outflow of Arabs was an orchestrated project they had planned, as was a later return when Israel was destroyed.

 

The Nakba exhibit is a temporary one at the museum, to run for several months with the use of photos video testimonies, artworks and family heirlooms describing the plight of Palestinian refugees from the 1940s and carrying forward to the present. The fact that around 800,000 Jews were displaced from their homes in Arab and Muslim nations in the Middle East and North Africa is never mentioned. Nor is the  fact that Palestinian terrorists led by Gaza's Hamas leadership committed a sprawling atrocity against Israeli citizens in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, which led to the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

 

A coalition of civil society groups has called on Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture Marc Miller to retract his statement on viewing the exhibit that it was replete with "errors" that "must be rectified", arguing that any government interference in the museum's exhibits (paid for by the federal government) would be unacceptable. Chief executive Isha Khan of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights argues that the exhibit was designed  explicitly to feature Palestinian experiences, however controversial their personal accounts are.

  

The UN created an orderly plan for the partition of Palestine. The Jewish people accepted it, but the Palestinians refused to even consider the idea.

After 13 months of violence, 700,000 Arabs had fled or been expelled from Mandatory Palestine and Israel, while 800,000 Jews were forced to flee North Africa and the Middle East and settle in Israel between 1948 and the early 1970s.

Prior to 1947 there were major bouts of violence toward Jews in 1920 (the Nebi Musa Riots), 1921 (Jaffa Riots), 1929 (Hebron massacre plus attacks in Safed and Jerusalem), and 1936–1939 and 1945–1946 (Arab Revolts). In the period after 1930, as the Jews became more militarily active, Jews responded to attacks from Arab villages that were perceived as origins of attacks against Jews. Nevertheless, the record of violence after 1920 was overwhelmingly a record of Arab attacks against Jews.

During the civil war both sides carried out unsavoury acts, but Israelis always claimed a military reason for the removal of populations, either to bolster communication lines or stop regular attacks being launched from Arab population centres.

Jewish authorities actively encouraged Arab populations to remain in the new State of Israel but did not try to keep Arabs from fleeing if they so chose.

Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy 

 

People gathered outside the Canadian Museum for Human Rights on June 26 to protest the Nakba exhibit. (Rudi Pawlychyn/CBC)

 

"What then can we conclude from this brief history?"

"First, that the Arab refugees left for several complicated reasons, including weak leadership and military unpreparedness, but the root cause of their flight was the war itself."

"The Nakba exhibit at the Canadian Human Rights Museum] falls short of the  facts."

David Bercuson and Logan Jaspers, Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy 

President Donald Trump; the "Most Consequential"

"I understand putting a priority on the president’s security, but frankly, this was just a despicable incident of disrespect for the press and for members of his own Cabinet."

"They should have been allowed to disembark and to fly home another way, rather than taking off on the No. 1 target in the whole region."

Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) 

 

"The Israelis passed a tip, a concern, that the plane and potentially the president was under threat."

"[But it turns out the] CIA had low confidence [in the Israeli tip, according to a more recent Post story  on Thursday]."

"I think that kind of leaves the Secret Service in a tough spot of assessing: What do you do in this zero-fail mission to keep the president safe?"

Dan Lamothe, reporter, Washington Post 

 

"It's really just up to Secret Service. I just follow what they like to do. They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane, equal safety. I do what they say." 

"The plane that I was on was at greater risk. Because that would be the plane that I think that they would be more likely to go for."

"[I was not surprised by the operation because I face] a lot of threats that  you don't know about."

"Any consequential president has a lot of threats. Non-consequential presidents don't get threatened. And I think that I may be the most consequential."

U.S. President Donald J. Trump  

President Trump speaks to reporters after stepping off Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on August 11, 2026. Anna Moneymaker, Getty Images

 

 As President Trump left a NATO summit last month that took place in Turkey, his departure appeared to have run into a bit of an inconvenience. As a result of a perceived threat to his safety and security, a covert alteration in his departure scheduling took place. Under cover he secretly left the Air Force One jet he was scheduled to remain aboard en route to the U.K. to instead furtively board a catering truck to make his journey from Turkey. A potential Iranian assassination threat had emerged while the president was in Turkey.

 

As President Trump left the Air Force One jet, he was accompanied with some of his longest-serving aides; no cabinet officials were among those with them. Passenger on the truck alongside the president included Dan Scavino, deputy chief of White House staff, Natalie Harp, executive assistant to the president and Walt Nauta, director of Oval Office operations. This was confidential information relayed by an official familiar with the operation, speaking on condition of anonymity.

 

Among that group were other lower-profile aides. Secretary of State Marco Rubio remained on Air Force one, along with Cabinet members and high level officials of the U.S. government, while those aboard the catering truck that concealed their presence moved from the legacy Air Force One aircraft to a smaller Air Force C-32A to fly on to the United Kingdom, separated from the White House press corps and senior government officials.

 

President Donald Trump, pictured as he prepares to board Air Force One at RAF Mildenhall, in England, on July 8.    Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

 

That July 8 furtive operation was reported by the Washington Post, setting off calls from congressional Democrats for an immediate briefing. The secret move had been withheld from journalists travelling with the president on that occasion, nor were they briefed for over a month after the fact. Along with several senior administration officials, military personnel, and Secret Service agents who remained on the legacy Air Force One plane, deemed too potentially hazardous for the president to remain aboard, were the journalists. 

 

The entire scenario, kept under wraps, did not become public knowledge until the Washington Post broke the story. Stirring outrage that the scheme that focused on ensuring that the president was secure, with a hushed-up alternate plan of avoidance, still left others, from government officials to White House journalists susceptible to danger should the information of an attempt through a shoulder-mounted missile to take down the presidential plane have been accurate. They were presumably left as part of a decoy to deflect attention from the president's departure. 

 

A catering truck is parked next to Air Force One at Ankara Esenboga Airport in Ankara, Turkey, on July 8.   ABC-TV/Pool/Reuters

  

"The U.S. Secret Service continuously analyzes a wide range of information to guide our protective operations in real time and across every location we secure."

"In light of recent assassination attempts and a significant increase in threats against the President, we remain unyielding in our mission."

Secret Service Communications Chief Anthony Guglielmi  

 

"The Waffen SS was founded by Heinrich Himmler in 1943 and soldiers swore an oath to Hitler."

"On Aug. 7, 2026, the Court of King’s Bench issued a decision allowing the termination of the $30,000 Yaroslav and Margaret Hunka Ukrainian Research Endowment Fund, and authorizing the return of the donation to the Hunka family. We acknowledge and respect the Court's decision. While this concludes the legal process, we remain mindful of the varied and deeply felt impacts this decision can have on individuals and the community. This court decision brings to a close an issue that began in September 2023, following Mr. Hunka’s introduction in the Canadian House of Commons."

"Since this process began, the university has strengthened its approach to naming and gift acceptance to ensure appropriate due diligence is conducted before creating a named endowment and that clear mechanisms are in place to reconsider or revoke naming arrangements when circumstances warrant. This includes updates to the Naming Policy and Gift Acceptance Policy, as well as the establishment of a Naming Advisory Group to provide recommendations on university namings informed by internal and external consultation. Drawing on lessons from this case, the Naming Advisory Group now provides additional oversight and review of named endowments, objects and spaces across the university."

"There are an additional eight endowments the university administers as trustee that are named for individuals with connections to the Galicia Division – the same division Mr. Hunka was a member of. The eight endowments vary in their specific purposes, and some include multiple donors. All of the endowments support valued research and education in Ukrainian studies. After consulting with partners and other organizations, including the Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) and the Jewish Federation of Edmonton, we will not undertake the time- and cost-intensive application process required to seek court approval to terminate or alter them."

University of Alberta Website statement 

The University of Alberta

 

The University of Alberta was given legal approval to proceed with the dissolution of a research trust named in honour of Ukrainian SS veteran Yaroslav Hunka. The Yaroslav & Margaret Hunka Ukrainian Research Endowment Fund, valued at $30,000 given to the university by Martin Hunka, son of Yaroslav, was meant to further research into Ukrainian history. If so, it would be quite embarrassing to the Hunka family if that research highlighted that the Waffen SS unit Mr. Hunka served with in the Galicia Division was comprised of Ukrainians who volunteered to serve with the Nazis. Their service aided Nazi German in its persecution of, carnage and mass murder of Poles and Jews during World War II.

 

In 2023, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was visiting Canada to express his appreciation for the considerable material and financial assistance by Canada given war-torn Ukraine through Russian President Vladimir Putin's full-fledged military campaign to continue wresting Ukrainian regional geographic assets into the Russian grasp of  territorial annexation with its full-scale invasion of February 2022, following its 2014 partial invasion of Ukraine's Donbas when Moscow annexed the Crimean Peninsula, Yaroslav Hunka was introduced as a Ukrainian hero and feted in the House of Commons. 

 

He had fought courageously against the Russians, proudly declared Parliament's then-Speaker Anthony Rota who declared him as a hero "who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians". A standing ovation ensued by Parliamentarians whose memories had been swamped by the occasion. It took no time at all for others who had no problem recalling such details that Russia had joined the Allied Forces against the Axis Forces in the wake of Germany invading its up-to-then Axis partner. Ukraine vastly preferred German occupation to that of the Soviets.  

 

Yaroslav Hunka, who served in a Ukrainian SS unit during World War Two, found himself in the middle of an international firestorm after receiving a standing ovation in Canada's House of Commons in 2023. The University of Alberta was granted permission to dissolve a charitable endowment in Hunka's name Aug. 7, 2026, over protests from his family. Photo by Handout photo

 

"The university did not terminate the Hunka Trust because it determined that Yaroslav [Hunka] was a war criminal or anti-Semitic."

"Rather, it did so because it perceived that any continued association with an individual who had served in a regiment connected to the Nazis would adversely affect the University of Alberta." 

"The House of Commons incident, and the public response that followed, made it clear that maintaining the Hunka Trust was not in the university's best interests."

Justice Debra Yungwirth, Court of Kings Bench, Alberta  

The $30,000 trust fund in honour of his parents made in 2019 by Martin Hunka was to be used for research into the underground activities of the Ukrainian Catholic Church during the Second World War. According to Martin Hunka, the university authority was made aware by him when he made the endowment, that his father Yaroslav had served in the Galicia Division, comprised of Nazi-favouring fascist 'nationalist' Ukrainians. 

 

Ukrainian nationalists contend that the decision by Mr. Hunka and others to become members in the unit should be considered a pragmatic choice, in exchange for which they would receive arms and training to enable them to respond to the dreaded Soviet reoccupation of Ukraine. For which the unit took an oath to Adolf Hitler. Their fascist inclination would be difficult to explain away, for a group operating under SS direction and implicated in wartime atrocities. 

 

Once this history was re-kindled through the controversy of Parliamentarians in Canada honouring a then-98-year-old veteran of World War II as a distinguished war hero, public censure ran high. Speaker Anthony Rota resigned his position and the University of Alberta informed Martin Hunka that the funding for the study he had directed would be returned. The Hunka family was set against the intention to dissolve the trust which led the university to seek formal court permission to proceed.

 

Yaroslav Hunka, right, sits in the House of Commons in Ottawa, Ontario on Friday, September 22, 2023.

Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press/AP

 

Now, despite that the university, while acknowledging other trusts set up to honour other World War II Ukrainians who voluntarily joined the Galicia Division to fight alongside other Waffen SS units and that they would not move to dissolve them, it should realize that its integrity and moral choices have been stained and will continue to be viewed with the suspicion they deserve if it just allows matters to rest there. Its concern over losing the over $1-million in endowments from all these sources, should never override its moral compass. 

"The Waffen SS was founded by Heinrich Himmler in 1943 and soldiers swore an oath to Hitler."

"The entire SS was declared a criminal organization by the International Military Tribunal during the Nuremberg trials after the war."

"The 1986 Deschênes Commission, which investigated how Nazi war criminals arrived in Canada, concluded in a decision that was disputed at the time by Jewish groups, that membership in the Waffen SS was not a war crime."

Zenith Wolfe,  Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Canadian Jewish News

 

"For years, FSWC has called on the University of Alberta to divest itself of all endowments that honour individuals who served in the Waffen-SS. FSWC has identified numerous additional such endowments held by the university that are collectively worth millions of dollars. Among them is an endowment named after Peter Savaryn who later became Chancellor of the University of Alberta. In 2023, the Governor General’s office expressed deep regret for awarding Savaryn the Order of Canada in 1987, given revelations about his Nazi past."

"Justice Yungwirth’s ruling affirms the University of Alberta’s decision to dissolve the Hunka endowment and return the funds to the Hunka family. However, in a statement released yesterday, the university indicated it did not intend to take similar action with respect to its other remaining endowments linked to individuals who served in the Waffen-SS. Instead, the university announced it would commit $100,000 over three years to research this Nazi division and “other complex and difficult aspects of twentieth-century history” through the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies."

"These actions do not resolve the fundamental concern: the University of Alberta is currently honouring individuals who served in the Waffen-SS by maintaining endowments that bear their names. As long as these endowments remain, they compound the harm to the Jewish community and Canadians more broadly, while leaving serious unanswered questions about the university’s decision to accept these funds in the first place. Research can deepen the historical record, but it cannot substitute for institutional accountability. That accountability must begin with eliminating the endowments."

“The university should now exercise its authority to dissolve its remaining endowments honouring individuals who served in the Waffen-SS. Such endowments have no place at the University of Alberta or any other institution of higher learning in this country,” said Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, Senior Director of Policy and Advocacy at FSWC. “The university must act without delay to right this longstanding wrong and ensure all future naming and gifting practices reflect historical truth and respect the victims and survivors of the Holocaust.”

Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre 

Over a week after Yaroslav Hunka was cheered in the House of Commons, Jewish groups are calling for Ottawa to release a decades-old report from the Deschênes Commission containing details about alleged Nazi war criminals living in Canada.  CBC News

 

Colombia's Natural Disaster --- Digging Out

"We are trying to get everyone out alive."

"One of the rescuers asked anyone trapped to whistle, and someone whistled back."

"They pulled out a man and a baby, but the wife is still in there."

"A lot of people have come, with supplies, with food, helping the firefighters, helping the people."

Andres Felipe Mejia, Cali volunteer 

 

"Let's remember that Colombia is full of active fault lines."

"The question isn't whether it can happen again. The question is rather when an earthquake of similar magnitude will occur at another of Colombia's seismic sources." 

Rodrigo León Loya, seismologist, geosciences professor, University of the Andes 

 

"There are many damaged buildings, collapsed buildings, people trapped and fatalities; the quake felt here was very severe."

"What has happened here in my country has been very hard and very sad."

"[My immediate family is safe, but] we are saddened by the loss of life." 

Sarria, Cali taxi driver  

PBS News

 

"Local communities were already facing armed conflict and high levels of poverty long before the ground began to shake. Chocó, at the epicenter of the quake, is the poorest region in the country."

"We are deeply concerned that today’s natural disaster will make the needs on the ground even steeper as people lose access to health care and other essential services."

Nicole Kast, International Rescue Committee director for Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador  

Volunteers in Colombia cleared rubble by hand as they worked through the night Monday, into Tuesday hunting for survivors of an earthquake that left at least 181 people dead, destroying over 100 homes and office buildings. Several cities were struck across Colombia's coffee-growing region and Pacific belt on Monday at 7:34 a.m. Structures toppled, towers swayed and roof tiles tumbled to the ground. There was a reported 100 aftershocks.

 

The hardest hit was Pereira, a city of 500,000 residents. Residents attempted to navigate dark streets with the help of flashlights, searching the ruins of shops and offices in a six-storey building. "It's so sad to see the whole city like this, knowing that there may still be people alive under there" 25-year-old Juana Marin said, joining dozens of other volunteers to clear the rubble.

 

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, this was the country's strongest earthquake in a century, as well as being one of its deadliest natural disasters.The mayors of major affected cities issued a joint statement to announce that at last count 181 people had been killed, with over 2,595 others injured. 

 

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A man rests near the site of earthquake damage in Pereira on Monday.  Alexis Munera / Anadolu via Getty Images

 

 A state of emergency was declared by newly-elected Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella, while vowing to oversee a concerted rescue effort. He was mobilizing "the entire military and police apparatus", deploying engineers, rescue workers and search dogs. Rescue volunteers went to work with picks, basic tools and their bare hands in Cali in a desperate bid to find survivors. Human chains were formed to expeditiously and safely remove bricks and masonry. Work was halted every few minutes so the rescuers could listen for signs of life from anyone trapped within the rubble. 

 

Red alerts were declared Monday in hospitals in five Colombian cities, while a nighttime curfew was declared in Cali. "It felt like the end of the world -- cars and motorcycles driving the wrong way, everyone searching for their loved ones", explained Nelson Moreno, a volunteer rescue worker. In the capital Bogota crowds rushed out into the streets still clad in pyjamas. 

 

The 7.4 magnitude quake and its initial powerful aftershock of 5.0 was felt across Colombia, and also felt in neighbouring Ecuador and Panama. The quake, at a depth of 110 kilometres, was likely caused by movement along a deep fault within the Nazca tectonic plate, according to experts at the U.S. Geological Survey.  

 

Residents and police carry a survivor pulled from the rubble after an earthquake struck Pereira, on Monday.   Miguel Angel Lopez / AP

 

"There are towns where people have lost everything, where people have died, where homes have been destroyed."

"We don’t have a full panorama of the damage, but we know it’s been massive."

"[The government’s response has so far been] concentrated in the capital, [authorities were flying the wounded from Quibdo to hospitals in the city of Medellín]."

Sterling Palacios, a regional environmental leader 

 

Wait For It

"[With wars around the globe in the past few years, people haven't paid much attention to climate change] because the world was on fire in different ways."

"The world is now on fire again with climate change, in a way that's increasingly difficult to ignore."

"It's going to keep getting worse."

Zeke Hausfather, climate change, Berkeley Earth

 

"The driver of the record warmth is climate change in the background."

"And it's a much larger -- much, much larger -- contribution than El Nino, which is just a tenth to two-tenths of a degree on top of that long-term trend."

Zachary Labe, climate scientist, Climate Central

 

"European heat waves are not in isolation. There's also been shocking heat waves in North America."

"There's been shockingly hot conditions in South America as well. There's been devastating heat waves in India."

"There's always heat waves somewhere in the world, sometime, but what is very unusual for Europe for this particular year is the frequency and extent of the heat waves."

Samantha Burgess, global strategic lead, Copernicus Climate Service 

UK and France prepare for another heat wave as western Europe has its 3rd hottest year on record so far. PBS

 

North America and Europe are experiencing wildfires while deadly heat waves hover over cities as the world's oceans have become hotter than ever recorded for this time of year. Spiked global temperatures and warped weather everywhere are attributed to a strengthening El Nino. In far too many areas of the globe, weather is hurtling the world toward a record-breaking summer of mind-bending heat. 

 

To the present, climate records demonstrate that 2026 up to now is the third-hottest year behind 2024 and 2025. In time, scientists believe chance is that by year's end, 2026 could become the hottest year on record. Should that come to pass, 2026 won't, climate scientists seem to believe, wear its hottest-year crown for long. With 2027 on the horizon bets are that the new year-to-come will take that hottest-year award as a reflection of a climate on steroids.

 

According to Dr. Hausfather, a 35 percent chance exists that 2026 will eclipse 2024's hottest record year. Still, according to his calculations, odds increase almost monthly, steadily rising from 7 percent in March. The daily sea surface temperature of the world was a tie from May forward with 2024 and since June has been recording increasing heat daily. Since oceans cover over 70 percent of the Earth's surface a month-and-a-half lag exists between heat in oceans eventually reflecting in the global heat temperature.

 

The ocean is getting hotter, and that’s not a good thing. Photo: Unsplash

 

At present, some 82 percent of the world's ocean surface is overheated this year, with marine heat waves, according to Europe's Copernicus climate service. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasted a month earlier of a 66 percent chance that 2025 would realize the fourth-hottest year and a 0.l percent chance to be No.1 for warmth by the end of the year. Those odds are expected to rise as the agency completes its July analysis.

 

El Nino causes a natural temporary warming of equatorial Pacific, heating up the average temperature of the globe, warping weather extremes across the planet, and this year El Nino is forecasted to become the strongest in recorded history. Releasing pent-up heat in the ocean, trapping heat as a result of greenhouse gases, with 90 percent going into the world's seas, even more heat is set to be released. This is a situation that keeps setting new record highs.

 

Wildfires, heat and extremes that dominate the summer of 2026 represent what scientists have warned of, resulting from the burning of coal, oil and gas. Traditional industrial pollution creates soot and smog which cool the planet and mask greenhouse gas-triggered warming, and it is on the decrease according to Dr. Hansen, with the climate reacting to greenhouse gases in a much more accelerated manner than scientists anticipated. 

 

The Bald Range wildfire burns near Summerland, British Columbia. Craig Milton

 

"[This is what scientists have long been warning about.] These are vivid pictures of not just the future, which is what we used to say, but on the whole of what climate change is doing."

"There's no question that climate change has increased the risk of wildfires."

"There's no question that the climate change increased the probability of really hot, nasty, even  unprecedented summers around the world."

Michael Oppenheimer, climate scientist, Princeton University 

U.S. Cyber Forces Succumb to Suicide Clusters

"[Among the command's top unfunded priorities, spending $11 million to study and address the mental health of cyber personnel is critical]."

"[The funding is used for] cognitive, psychological, physiological and spiritual sustainment for high-tempo cyber operators."

"Without funding, burnout and force degradation will increase."

General Joshua Rudd, Leader, Cyber Command 

US Cyber Command is scrutinizing an unusually high number of deaths by suicide among personnel over a month-long period this summer, Bloomberg  

Deaths by suicide in unusual numbers among the cyberwarfare unit of the U.S. military represents a dilemma in search of a cure; at the very least an understanding of what drives the cluster of suicide deaths. The secretive section of the armed forces facing this phenomenon are of high concern to both U.S. lawmakers and military leaders within the armed forces section tasked to defend U.S. computer systems, and which in turn hacks the systems of foreign adversaries.

 

The mental health state of military hackers have long been concerning, as a reflection of their  workload surging as a result of foreign conflicts. Up to five individuals working in or closely with US. Cyber Command took their on lives between early June and early July, according to internal military communications, public records and those who spoke on condition of anonymity. Cyber Command's leader acknowledged three of those suicides in an email to staff; two more suicides fo;lowed.

 

Sgt. Kevin Stallings, a digital network intelligence analyst, was stationed at Fort Meade, Maryland where Cyber Command headquarters sits. He took his own life just before his 37th birthday. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is rarely caused by a single event or circumstance. The circumstances of at least one of the recent deaths is being actively investigated. Motivation for the suicides remains unclear from a study of the records. 

 

An unusually high number of deaths by suicide among personnel in the U.S. military's cyberwarfare unit is concerning for lawmakers and military leaders. Josef Cole/ U.S. Army Files

 

Personnel with Cyber Command most often work far from the physical front lines of war; their roles are largely secret. They suffer, in some cases, from insomnia, from memory loss, rumination and physical illness, according to Erick Miyares, psychologist and former military employee embedded at the National Security Agency. 

 

Cyber Command has linked the quick succession of deaths as a 'suicide cluster', which the Pentagon defines as suicides taking place closer together than normal, and requires they be addressed with specific actions. Cyber Command's workload surged this year, resulting from factors that include the U.S. war with Iran and other foreign conflicts. Also driven up by the urgent need to use and guard against new artificial intelligence models, increasingly adept at hacking computer systems.

 

According to the National Defense Authorization Act from 2023, the command faced "chronic shortage of proficient personnel in key work roles" since its founding in 2010.  

 

The U.S. Cyber Command building (center) stands on the National Security Agency campus at Fort Meade, Maryland. | REUTERS

 

"The loss of any member of the military community is a tragedy, and our deepest sympathies are with their loved ones."

"[The military] remains steadfast in our commitment to suicide prevention. [We] take a comprehensive, integrated approach to suicide prevention [at all levels]."

"[As a result of these] tragic incidents [the Senate Armed Services Committee] is actively engaging with Cyber Command to discuss what resources are needed."

Pentagon