The IMF’s Proxy War Against Russia

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Tuesday, the IMF joined the New Cold War. It has been lending money to Ukraine despite the Fund’s rules blocking it from lending to countries with no visible chance of paying (the “No More Argentinas” rule from 2001). When IMF head Christine Lagarde made the last IMF loan to Ukraine in the spring, she expressed the hope that there would be peace. But President Porochenko immediately announced that he would use the proceeds to step up his nation’s civil war with the Russian-speaking population in the East – the Donbass.

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Leonardo’s Convenient Lie

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Leonardo DiCaprio has spoken movingly about how he witnessed at first hand the horrors of climate change during the making of his Oscar-tipped movie The Revenant.

These unprecedented weather conditions in which sudden warm gusts of winds blew away the snow: they’ve been happening year in year out in southern Alberta since the dawn of time. There’s nothing weird or abnormal about them at all. They’re seasonal hot winds called the Chinook.

It would be hilarious, if the star of The Revenant wasn’t also the head of a multimillion-dollar environmental lobby group, the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, and a producer of documentaries on climate change.

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Google Knows Best

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In an op-ed for The New York Times, Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, inserted himself directly into the middle of a heated debate about the line between fighting terrorism’s online reach and internet censorship.

 “It’s our responsibility to demonstrate that stability and free expression go hand in hand,” he writes. “We should build tools to help de-escalate tensions on social media—sort of like spell-checkers, but for hate and harassment.”

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The Don Corleone of Climate Change

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If international climate talks really stall, don’t be surprised if there might be an ever-so-slight intervention by Pope Francis.

Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace who helped draft the pope’s June encyclical on global warming, said the pontiff has “deep trust” that negotiators in Paris will get the job done. But just in case they don’t, the pope might possibly send a gentle message, he said.

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Freedom of Speech? Not in Canada.

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A Toronto city councillor called Donald Trump a fascist on Twitter Tuesday and said the Trump International Hotel & Tower in the city’s downtown should change its name.

Ward 22 Coun. Josh Matlow said he was going to write to the owners of the 65-storey luxury hotel and residence asking them to remove the Republic presidential hopeful’s name from the downtown landmark.

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