“Conspiracy theory” is a phrase allegedly authored by the CIA sixty-odd years ago, to describe some of the bizarre beliefs about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The expression caught on after that, because conspiracy theories did, too.

There are harmful conspiracy theories, and ones that aren’t. Harmless ones include: the moon landing was faked, the Earth is flat, Paul McCartney is dead, and flying saucers and aliens are being kept at Area 51 in Nevada.

Harmful conspiracy theories are more numerous: 9/11 was an inside job, Covid-19 wasn’t real, the Sandy Hook massacre was staged, the Holocaust was a “Holohoax,” Jews control the world (along with the Illuminati and Freemasons) and on and on.

The most enduring conspiracy theories – the ones with often fatal consequences – concern Jews. Conspiracy theories about Jews have been around almost as long as Jews themselves. As I note in my forthcoming book The Hidden Hand, one of the earliest conspiracy theories can be traced back to Twelfth Century England, when the Bishop of Norwich popularized the notion that a boy had been stolen by Jews and drained of blood to use in secret rituals.

Pre-Internet, the Bishop of Norwich and his ilk promoted conspiracy theories by word of mouth, grimy leaflets and self-published manuscripts. But since the mid-Nineties, the world wide web has been the main breeding ground for dangerous conspiracy theories. Simultaneously, the Internet has been the main source of political power, too.

For politicians like Donald Trump – who is arguably the most-effective manipulator of online conspiracy theories in modern times – the Internet has been a godsend. Barack Obama “birther” claims; false election fraud claims; Pizzagate; Ted Cruz’ father assassinated JFK; Hunter Biden’s laptop; Biden was a robot; Justin Trudeau was the secret son of Fidel Castro; and – most recently – that only Democrats are found in the Epstein files. These Trump-inspired or Trump-promoted conspiracy theories clearly haven’t hurt him in twice securing the most powerful office on (the not-flat) Earth.

Given how successful Trump has been, it’s inevitable that other politicians will make use of conspiracy theories to grasp power. It’s happening a lot, now, because it works.

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With everything else that is going on in the world – Iran reportedly slaughtering 30,000 of its own citizens, the names of dozens of Trump administration figures showing up in the latest dump of sordid Epstein files, Canada beset by Arctic temperatures in a winter without end – Pierre Poilievre’s fate doesn’t seem terribly relevant. Honestly, who cares?

Card-carrying Conservatives obviously did. Several thousand participated in this weekend’s review of Poilievre’s leadership. An impressive 87 per cent of them voted to keep him around. Polls, too, show a majority of the Conservative base remain unabashed fans.

But Canadians, in substantial numbers, just aren’t. Conservatives adore Pierre Poilievre – and Canadian voters remain deeply unimpressed.

That truth hasn’t been changed by the leadership review conducted at the Tory convention in Calgary. One Liaison Strategies poll released this week showed Poilievre underwater everywhere in Canada. (Except in Alberta, that is, where the convention coincidentally took place.)

While the Conservatives were still gathering, Abacus’ David Coletto wrote that “Prime Minister Mark Carney’s personal standing has reached its highest level yet, with a net favourable rating of +23 and net positive approval across every region…Carney is at his strongest point yet, the government is gaining broader cross partisan approval, and the Liberals are now ahead nationally.”

If an election were to be held now, seat models project Carney would win 50 more seats than Poilievre, giving him a huge Parliamentary majority. Leger, which polls for Postmedia, found that 78 per cent of self-identifying Conservatives want Poilievre to remain as their leader.

Meanwhile, more than 70 per cent Liberal and New Democrat voters, Leger also found, want Poilievre gone.

Tory partisans will shrug about all this, which approximates what they’ve been doing for months. They will say, and have, that they don’t ever expect Grits or Dippers to like their leader. Fair enough.

But it’s reckless to be indifferent to political reality – which is that Canadian Conservative partisans are still dramatically out of step with the average Canadian voter. There is no enthusiasm for the Conservative leader outside of the Conservative base, and Conservatives don’t seem to care.

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Amit Segal is one of the most influential journalists in Israel and the Middle East. He has sources at the highest level of governments and intelligence agencies. He writes a column for the Wall Street Journal and is a best-selling author.

And, his sources say, 30,000 Iranians were slaughtered over a 36-hour period between January 8 and 10, 2026. By their own government. That’s nearly 1,000 people murdered every hour.

“That makes it not just the deadliest period in Iranian history,” Segal said in an Honest reporting-sponsored interview this week. “It’s the deadliest period since the Holocaust. There has never been a single event in which this number of casualties was recorded since World War Two.”

The protests against Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his repressive Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have been raging for weeks, but they have attracted precious little attention in the West. Part of the reason for that has been a near-total Internet blackout imposed by Khamenei and the IRGC – a “digital darkness,” Segal says – and the fact that journalists there face imprisonment or death.

But information is seeping out, and much of it is being collected by Israel’s powerful intelligence agencies. Those agencies then pass along some of what they know to Amit Segal, who they trust.

Among the revelations Segal shared in our interview:

The Ayatollahs’ Regime is Collapsing. Iran was once on the verge of becoming a regional superpower, Segal says, but not now. The Islamic regime’s leaders simply don’t have enough resources to run the country – food, electricity, water and gasoline. “From what I hear in the Israeli security establishment, they believe that [the Iranian] regime is finished,” Segal says. “But it takes time in Iran. It took 11 months for [Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini to actually become the Supreme Leader of Iran. We might expect [regime change] that is measured by months, rather than days or weeks.”

The Israelis and the Americans are ready to strike. The U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier arrived in the Middle East this week, and would lead any American military intervention in Iran. A carrier “strike group” can include guided missile cruisers, anti-aircraft warships and anti-submarine destroyers – and more than 5,000 U.S. troops have been moved to the region, as well. “I don’t know if any attack is imminent,” Segal says. “But I know one thing for sure: there enough offensive facilities in the Middle East to attack Iran. However, there still aren’t enough defensive forces.”

 

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… So says Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta organization, which is unabashedly pro-MAGA. I say they’re lying.

If anyone knows how this image, which has been published by dozens of reputable news organizations, has been in any way altered, let us know in comments.

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Having grown up in Alberta as a card-carrying Liberal, I knew how to make friends with Conservatives. If I didn’t, I would’ve had no friends.

When you are a progressive-type surrounded by conservative types, you learn pretty quickly that no ideology has a monopoly on common sense. Every political tribe – Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats – has their own share of lunatics. Every tribe has their own contingent of kooks and crooks.

But Donald Trump is in a category of his own.

On Monday morning, many of us woke to news that Trump had written a text message to Norway’s Prime Minister. Here is part of what it said.

“Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America,” he wrote, adding that he had done more for NATO than any person who had ever lived. Then: “The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”

It’s been confirmed as authentic by Norway, and by PBS, which got the scoop. Donald Trump, the President of the the United States of America, is saying he no longer needs to “think purely of Peace” because he didn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize. So, he will push to control Greenland – which, not that these things seemingly matter anymore, is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. Not Norway.

There has been lots of insanity in Trump’s second term: Canada as the 51st state, prosecutions of critics, militarization of U.S. cities, assaults on the Federal Reserve, the killing of Renee Good, crippling tariffs levied against allies (but none against Russia). It’s been exactly a year since Trump commenced his second spin through the White House (which he has partly torn down, and gilded like a hooker’s drawing room). But it feels like a decade.

That’s because Trump’s first term in office, while non compos mentis, was not as bad as the last twelve months have been. During his first term, he did lots of things that were crazy. January 6, abusing power and obstructing elections were the two big ones, and they helped to get him impeached, twice. But he was surrounded by comparatively-sane people in his first term. Not this time. Not in 2025-2026. The inmates are running the asylum, on this go-round.

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