Trump's claims about Chinese wind power are WAY off

President Trump is still droning on in his speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as I write this, already well over his allotted time. And, as expected, there's a lot to take exception to.

Just to take one example of his well-documented habit of citing "alternative facts" (aka "lies"), Trump was on his familiar hobby horse, criticising wind turbines, specifically Chinese wind turbines. He suggested that, although "China makes almost all of the windmills, and yet I haven't been able to find any wind farms in China".

Well, I guess he didn't look very hard. China is host to 11 of the largest 12 land-based windfarms in the world, headed up by Xinjiang Hami Wind Farm and Gansu Guazhou Wind Farm, which are an order of magnitude bigger than windfarms elsewhere in the world.

And China produces more wind power than any other country - a huge 992 terawatt hours in 2024. Second? The USA (despite Trump's best efforts to hobble the industry), which produced less than half as much.

Much else that Trump said during his rambling speech was misleading or just plain wrong. But Chinese wind power was definitely the wrong hill to choose to die on.

Carney should avoid Trump's "Board of Peace" like the plague

Hard on the heels of his provocative, inspiring and distinctly critical speech at Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is apparently seriously considering joining Donald Trump's "Board of Peace", which is supposed to help bring about a just and lasting peace in Gaza (and maybe elsewhere).

While the end goal may be laudable, Carney should have nothing to do with this latest Trump vanity project. The UN did endorse the idea, but what has ultimately emerged is a far cry from what was promised and voted on, in a classic bait-and-switch move by Trump. Indeed, the Board's charter doesn't even mention Gaza!

Just look at the other members of this invitation-only club thus far: USA, Belarus, Azerbaijan, United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Argentina, Armenia, and of course Israel (yes, the fox is expected to regulate the hen coop). It's a strange assortment of (mainly authoritarian, as it happens) states. Putin has apparently been asked, and is maybe thinking about it, as are Egypt, Turkey, Thailand, Germany, UK, Paraguay, India, China, Ukraine, Kosovo, Slovenia and Croatia. France's Emmanuel Macron has, sensibly, already summarily refused to be involved in such a group, as have Sweden and Norway.

Mr. Carney should certainly not even consider paying $1 billion to become a "permanent" member of the Board, rather than just a three-year member. (How ridiculous is that? Just how long is Trump planning on stringing this out? What is the money for?). And, thankfully, it seems like he is not thinking about it.

But Carney should follow some of the more sensible countries in not touching the Trump-led Board - what The Guardian calls his "imperial court" - with a bargepole.

Carney outdoes himself at Davos

Well.

Mark Carney just made the speech of his life - "the most important speech in Canadian history", if you believe the National Observer - and you can watch it on YouTube, or read it here. It earned a rare standing ovation at Davos.

Appearing at the Davos World Economic Forum, his 16-minute speech - which he actually wrote himself, no professional speech-writers here - laid out Canada's way forward as a middle power in a post-Trump world. And, while he never actually mentioned the word "America", "USA" or "Trump" once, it was very clear what he was talking about.

"The old order is not coming back", he intoned. "We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy. But from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger, and more just." There were many more quotables: "The end of a nice story and the beginning of a brutal reality"; "We're in a rupture, not a transition"; "When rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself"; "The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must"; "To hope that compliance will buy safety - it won't"; "If you are not at the table, you are on the menu"; "This is not sovereignty, it is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination".

Referencing Thucydides and Václav Havel, Carney did indeed outdo himself. Yes, there was some bull in there too. For example, the claim that Canada has the "most educated population in the world" - where did that come from? And asserting "sustainable development" as one of Canada's core values is a bit strong coming from a man who has spent the last year walking back much of Canada's sustainability.

But kudos to Carney for a strong showing from a man who sometimes comes over as a bit "blah".

Spoof headlines or real?

Some of the headlines in today's paper looks like spoofs or satires, something The Onion or This Hour Has 22 Minutes might have come up with.

• Military models Canadian response to hypothetical American invasion
• Canada weighs sending soldiers to Greenland in face of U.S. threats
• US President ties Greenland threats to Nobel snub
• Trump invites Netanyahu to join his Board of Peace

Unfortunately, they are all too real. As a Globe and Mail editorial put it: "It is a time of unthinkable things, that move from impossibility to improbability to reality with disorienting and alarming speed".

Maybe cows are not all stupid

If you thought that cows were pretty stupid, well, you're probably right. But maybe not AS stupid as you thought.

It turns out that cows have joined the relatively exclusive club of tool-wielding animals, in the company of humans, chimpanzees, crows, and maybe humpback whales.

And before we get too excited, it's really only Veronika, a 13-year old Swiss Brown cow that lives on a farm in Austria, essentially as a pet. Veronika, over the years, has perfected her technique of using sticks or brushes to scratch herself in various places. It's not much maybe, but it's enough to get some animal behaviourists quite excited.

All those other cows? Yeah, pretty stupid.I 

The search for an Alzheimer's cure takes a different path

Oodles of money has been pumped into Alzheimer's Disease research over the years, and all we have to show for it is aducanumab, a controversial monoclonal antibody that targets amyloid plaques in the brain (approved on an accelerated schedule for use in the US, but not approved in Canada). The drug had inconsistent and contradictory clinical trial results, and faced significant debate over its effectiveness and widespread hesitation by doctors. Ultimately, it was withdrawn by its manufacturer, Biogen, when they realized they couldn't make any money from it.

Much of the difficulty in making any headway against Alzheimer's is because, thus far, the understanding that Alzheimer's is largely caused by clumps of a protein called beta-amyloid in the brain. This has been the conventional wisdom since the finding was published in a 2006 paper, and that is where almost all the effort towards a cure has been directed. Unfortunately, that paper was found to be based on fabricated data, and was retracted in 2024. Nearly 20 years wasted.

Since this retraction, research has opened up somewhat. Promising research right here in Toronto looks at beta-amyloid proteins not as a destructive abnormally-produced protein, but as part of the brain's immune system. The brain has its own immune system, just like the rest of the body and, when it encounters bacteria or trauma, it fights back, using beta-amyloid as a key contributor. Because the fat molecules making up the membranes of bacteria are very similar to the membranes of brain cells, the beya-amyloid can end up attacking the very brain cells it is supposed to be protecting, leading to chronic progressive loss of brain cell function, i.e. dementia.

This makes Alzheimer's (the most common type of dementia) not so much a disease of the brain as a disorder of the immune system within the brain, or an autoimmune disease. We do have steroid-based therapies against other autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. But this kind of therapy will not work for the brain, but targeting other immune-regulating pathways in the brain may lead to new and effective treatments for the disease.

Either way, though, the search for a cure is pretty much back to square one.

The US wind industry overcomes the MAGA blowhards

As has been reported repeatedly, here in this blog and elsewhere, Donald Trump (and, by extension, his administration, which blindly and unquestioningly follows whatever he says) hates wind turbines, particularly offshore wind turbines. He calls them "losers" and "the scam of the century". No-one is quite sure why he hates them so much - his convenient "national security" argument is far from convincing - but there are theories. 

Anyway, in pursuance of this irrational hate, Trump has issued several edicts banning various wind farm developments off the east coast of America, including some that were all but complete. The states and developers involved have taken recourse to the courts to try to rectify this, and to recoup some of the billions of dollars they have already sunk into these projects.

And they are winning.

Three separate federal judges, including one appointed by Trump, have ruled Trump's decrees illegal and allowed construction to resume on windfarms off the coasts of New England, New York and Virginia.

So, despite Congress stopping incentives and the Republican administration imposing a variety of roadblocks in the way of permitting, the wind industry persists against all odd

What does MAGA really believe about DEI?

An article on Martin Luther King Day includes a quote from a Trump White House spokesperson: "Everything President Trump does is in the best interest of the American people. That includes rolling back harmful DEI agendas, deporting dangerous criminal illegal aliens from American communities, or ensuring we are being honest about our country's great history."

Now there are any number of things wrong with that quote, both in principle, and in the practical way in which those beliefs are being acted on. But the thing that really stood out for me was the use of the word "harmful". In what way is the pursuit of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) considered actually harmful by the MAGA crowd?

Here's what MAGA believes about DEI, gleaned mainly from an AI query and a CNN article:

• DEI actively disadvantages White people and men, attempting to solve past discrimination by creating new forms of discirimination.
• DEI leads to hiring or promoting less qualified minority candidates, shifting the focus from merit to identity.
• DEI fosters resentment and focusses on differences, creating divisions, and turning people into victims and oppressors.
• DEI is redundant in today's post-racial world, where significant racial equality has already been achieved.
• DEI programs are costly, ineffective bureaucracies, filled with activists rather than genuine problem-solvers.
• DEi policies violate constitutional rights, particularly for educators and students, promoting specific ideologies and stifling free speech.

Of course, a lot of these points are merely twists on the arguments for DEI. And I do believe that they are, by and large, "straw men" arguments (intentionally misrepresented propositions), and that a good proportion of the people espousing them just don't like Black people. But I have no proof of that :)

Canada's Supreme Court takes on racial profiling - again

The Supreme Court of Canada is about to re-visit a case that most people thought had been long resolved and closed. 

The case revolves around the right of police officers to randomly stop drivers for document checks, even if there is no actual suspicion of anything illegal. Back in 1990, the Supreme Court ruled that such stops were legal because, although they appear to contravene the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Court ruled that it was a reasonable limit on individual freedoms in the interests of preserving safety on our roads. 

But the Supreme Court decision was far from unanimous, and it has been treated with legal skepticism ever since, mainly because it tends to lead to racial profiling. Yes, such random stops do sometimes yield results, e.g. someone driving after being suspended, etc. But they are clearly open to abuse, particularly racial abuse. 

(Interestingly, random police stops at fixed checkpoints, e.g. to deter drunk driving, are not being challenged. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld their legality. But what really is the difference? Are they not just as open to racial profiling?)

Now, I'm not really sure why police would distroportionately choose to stop Black people. Is it because of a perception that Blacks are more likely to break the law than Whites, either from personal experience or from underlying or systemic racism, knowingly or otherwise? But clearly it is a fact: research shows that Black people are around five times as likely as Whites to be targeted during such "random" stops.

Legal challenges in some  provinces, e.g. Quebec, have occasionally succeeded in striking down the 1990 decision. But governments, both in Quebec and federally, who insist that random stops are essential for road safety - even though there does not seem to be any compelling empirical evidence to prove that - want the matter decided once and for all by the highest court in the land, hence this week's Supreme Court case.

It will be interesting to see the Court's findings. My initial feeling was that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with random stops as a road safety strategy. And, God knows, Canads's roads are pretty scary these days, although the numbers of accidents and deaths being reported in Canada have come down significantly in recent decades, they seem to be on the rise again). And there is no obvious reason to me why Black people should be targeted so disproportionately, but clearly they are. 

So, given that, what is the remedy? Yes, we could say "no more random stops", a rather draconian solution, throwing the baby out with the proverbial bathwater. But is there really no middle way? I'm not saying that mandatory anti-racism training is the answer - that seems like a bit of a pie-in-the-sky / Kumbaya / Hail Mary kind of solution. But are there no other ideas? Surely, people have spend decades researching this stuff: have they come up with nothing?

Canada's EV deal with China is either the rock or the hard place

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, as is his wont, is portraying the deal negotiated by Prime Minister Mark Carney with China as disastrous for Ontario, Canada, and the universe as a whole.

Along with various union leaders in the automotive industry, Ford has been broadcasting histrionic warnings about Mr Carney's deal to anyone who will listen. The agreement allows the first 49,000 cheap Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) each year into Canada at a much reduced 6.1% tarriff (down from 100%), in return for much reduced Chinese tariffs on our exports of canola (15%, down from 84%), and the removal of other tariffs on Chinese imports of our canola meal, lobsters, crabs and peas.

Many analysts see this as a good deal for Canada - as good a deal as we are ever likely to get with an economic behemoth like China - and politicians in the Prairies (where the canola comes from) and in BC and the Maritimes (where the seafood comes from) see it as very good. Many Canadian car dealers too welcome the move, as do many consumer groups who see a chance for Canadians to get high quality electric vehicles at an affordable price. 

But Ford is fixated on the automotive implications, and specifically the Ontario automotive implications, of the deal, which he sees as all bad. He didn't mince words or hold back in his criticism of the Prime Minister and other premiers, even if his political and economic analysis was predictably naïve. Captain Canada is not big on nuance. He also accuses Mr. Carney of fomenting division between the provinces, something that he himself is guilty of on this and many other occasions.

But does he have a point? Is this "a self-inflicted wound", as one union leader put it? Does it give China "a foot in the door" of our automotive sector, and is that necessarily such a bad thing? Or is this just bull-in-a-china-shop Ford going off half-cocked as per usual?

49,000 EVs is not that many compared to the 264,000 EV (including plug-in hybrid electrics) already being sold in Canada. Compared to the 2 million or so total vehicle sales, it is peanuts (about 2½%). So, it's not really going to have an appreciable overall effect on Canada's car production in the short term, and nothing like the impact of American tariffs on cars in the medium to long term. Certainly, out of China's annual EV production, this hardly registers at all. And it hardly consitutes "flooding" the Canadian market, as Ford claims. 

Most of the motor vehicles sold in Canada are imported anyway. Most of them come from the USA (although much fewer than a year or two ago), the rest from Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Germany, and yes, China. (We were importing over 9,000 cars a year from China before we applied the 100% tariff at America's behest in late 2024). Only a small percentage - 9-13% - of cars sold in Canada are actually made in Canada. The rest of the cars built in Canada are exported, mainly to the US. Which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it.

There's also the expectation, baked into the deal, of future Chinese investment in Canadian-built EVs in the future, something Ford himself has been calling for. And it might just rejuvenate flagging EV sales in Canada since the government grant sweeteners were withdrawn, not in itself a bad thing.

But are they safe? Ford suggests not (although without evidence). In fact, several Chinese EVs were among the safest last year, according to the European New Car Assessment Program.

Mr. Ford's other contention is that Chinese EVs would be "spy cars". As he puts it, in his usual man-on-the-street demotic: "I don't trust what the Chinese put in these cars". Pierre Poilievre, the master of the empty sound-bite, calls them "roving surveillance operations". I'm not sure exactly what Ford and Poilievre think they will be able to do, but any Chinese cars imported will have to be authorized and certified by Transport Canada first. Until that happens, imported Chinese-built EVs will probably be limited to brands like Tesla and Polestar, which we already have. Chinese brands like BYD, Geely, Xiaomi, NIO and XPeng will follow later when authorized. 

While the deal sets a price goal of $35,000 by 2035, it's unlikely that China's ultra-cheap EVs (like BYD's Seagull) will ever come to Canada, because it would be hard to make them fit Canada's safety and reliability requirements. Plus, selling ultra-cheap cars needs large volume to make it work, which the current deal does not allow for.

He also says he is convinced that any Chinese-made cars would not be allowed over the Canada-US border, although it's not clear on what basis he believes that. (Although no Chinese brands are sold in the US, over 100,000 Chinese-built cars from brands like Volvo, Buick, Lincoln and Tesla are imported from China to the US each year.)

Of course, how the Trump administration will react to the Canada-China deal, given that they expect everyone to follow their lead on Chinese tariffs (as we did over a year ago), is anyone's guess. Thus far, Trump himself has been suspiciously positive, saying, "That's what he should be doing ... If you can get a deal with China, you should do that, right?", and referring to the deal as a "good thing", even if his Trade Representative Jamieson Greer called it "problematic for Canada", and Transport Secretary Sean Duffy warned onimously "I think they'll look back at this decision and surely regret it", the kind of veiled threat that the US routinely deals in these days.

The Canadian movento strike a deal with China was apparently shared in advance with the Americans, including Greer, so no-one was taken by surprise.

This being the year we have to review/renegotiate the Canada United States Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), the stakes are particularly high. But given that we can no longer rely on the USA as being a sensible and reliable trade partner, what choice did Canada have but to look elsewhere? I don't relish dealing with China any more than the next guy, but what's a country to do? Least-worst option? Rock and a hard place?

WestJet bows to customer backlash

A viral 30-second TikTok video of a couple of people dealing with WestJet's new smaller-legroom plane layout seems to have been instrumental in pushing Westjet to reverse their policy.

WestJet had changed the layout of 22 of their Boeing 737s to have an extra row of seats in order, they say, to save customers money. Each economy class seat had a 28" pitch (the distance between one seat and the seat in front), compared to the usual North American  29" or 30" pitch. They were also made non-reclining, or with a "fixed recline design" in industry parlance.

They say that this kind of layout in common in Europe, but Canadians were having none of it, and there was a strong backlash from customers. In fact, so strong a backlash that WestJet reversed their decision and reverted to the old layout, saying " We saw that this was all trending in the wrong direction". 

And social media trends are what it's all about these days. So, here's a rare example of a commercial company bowing to the demands of customers.

Two different culinary worlds

A two Michelin-starred restaurant in the small town of Machynlleth in mid-Wales has been given a failing one-star food safety rating by the Food Standards Agency, which puts it below minimum legal operating standards.

The mandatory checks are to ensure that food is being handled and produced hygenically. The one-star rating means that "major improvement" is needed at the fancy restaurant, which charges almost £500 a head.

The chef is predictably outraged, and says he is not embarrassed by the rating, suggesting that the inspectors just don't understand his operations. "Just because our rules don't fit their rules, they're questioning it", he whines.

The worst part of all this, though, is the reaction of influential food critic Giles Coren. "The normal health and safety things, I think it's fair enough, don't really apply", Coren opined, concluding that the rules "should probably be modernised". Coren whittered on about the special nature of the restaurant: "He is cooking with fire ... he stands there on his leather apron, and it's roaring like fireworks". *Yawn*

The Chartered Insitute of Environmental Health confirms that the rules are not "optional, subjective or old-fashioned", and that "no dining experience, however unusual or exclusive, sits outside the law".

Has the Nobel Peace Prize outlived its usefulness?

Speaking of the Nobel Peace Prize, you have to wonder these days whether it is still relevant and legitimate, least of all useful. No less a personage than Lloyd Axworthy, Canadian one-time Peace Prize nominee, echoes my own sentiments.

The Nobel Peace Prize was inaugurated by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, back in 1895, partly to assuage his own guilt at bringing such a destructive power into the world, and at the fortune he had amassed from the sale of armaments. So, you could say that the Prize was tainted from the get-go. But it was undeniably a worthy endeavour, with its mandate to honour those who have done the most to advance fraternity among nations, reduce standing armies, and promote peace through cooperation and dialogue.

There have been some very laudable winners over the decades, including Nelson Mandela, Liu Xiaobo, Dalai Lama, Andrei Sakharov, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Elie Wiesel, as well as a bunch of very worthy organizations like the International Peace Bureau, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International, the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces, etc.

However, the Prize has also seen its share of controversial recipients: Henry Kissinger in 1973, in the midst of America's war in Vietnam; Yasser Arafat in 1994, despite his deeply ambiguous legacy of violence; Abiy Ahmed in 2019, who then plunged Ethiopia into a very nasty civil war just a year later; even Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991, who seemed thoroughly deserving at the time, but whose brutal crackdown on the Myanmar's Rohingya minority decades later has drawn international condemnation. And now we have María Corina Machado, despite her support for sanctions and military intervention.

Several US Presidents have earned the accolade - Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama - some more deserving than others. There was a lot of debate about Obama's award, so early in his tenure, before he had achieved much of anything. And now, of course, Donald Trump is trying to lie, buy, bluster and batter his way into the annals. Nobel Laureate Machado has vowed to share her Prize with him, and the leaders of many other countries have promised to nominate him if he will only cut their countries some slack on trade. Under Trump, the Prize has become distinctly transactional.

Each year, when the Nobel Peace Prize nominees and winners are announced, it is met with more and more skepticism. It is hard for the Nobel Committee not to get caught up in global politics to some extent, and global politics is becoming increasingly messy, cynical and noxious. Has the Nobel Peace Prize lost its meaning, then, in a world where law, dialogue, morality and good-faith negotiations hold less and less sway?

Well, as the pragmatic Mr. Axworthy puts it: "Peacemaking has always been a grubby, imperfect business, conducted amid moral compromises and by flawed actors. To discard the ideal because its execution is imperfect would be to surrender entirely to the law of the jungle." Just so.

No, Machado can't "share" her Nobel Peace Prize with Donald Trump

Can Venezuela opposition leader Maria Corina Machado really "share" her Nobel Peace Prize with US President Donald Trump?

Well, of course she can't.

After the US's illegal invasion of Venezuela and abduction of President Maduro, Trump decided to install Vice President Delcy Rodriguez as his new puppet president in Venezuela. He dismissed Nobel Peace Prize winner and exiled opposition leader Machado out of hand as lacking "the support or the respect within the country".

But his tone began to change after the wily Machado offered to "share" her Nobel Prize with Trump, knowing full well that the Nobel Prize has been Trump's goal all along (despite his openly militaristic recent actions). He called the offer a "great honour", although he still hasn't contacted Machado as far as we know, and he certainly hasn't done anything about placing her in a presidential position. I think he just likes to be asked...

Whether Machado deserved the Prize in the first place is an open question, especially given her calls for sanctions and military intervention. She is just the latest in the lost of ambiguous prize recipients, as many are asking whether the Nobel Peace Prize has lost its way (or become too caught up in global politics) in recent years. Trump is definitely not going to help that trajectory.

But anyway, she definitely wouldn't be able to share her prize. The Nobel Committee has been very clear about that. They can award a shared prize, if they so choose, but once awarded, it cannot be revoked, shared or transferred. Which make sense when you think about it.

UPDATE

Well, it seems like she gave it to him anyway, regardless of all of the above.

These people!

Is there really an "affordability crisis"?

So, can this be true? I think it probably is. But, if it is, it flies in the face of pretty much everything that politicians have been telling us for years, and everything that most people firmly believe about their own circumstances.

Everyone seems to believe that, even now, prices are through the roof, that it is harder and harder to make ends meet, and that earnings are just not keeping pace with inflation. This is the whole "affordability crisis" or "cost-of-living crisis" that we keep hearing about, whether it be sheepishly from the governing party or with righteous outrage from the opposition

Thing is, though, it's not actually true. Canadian inflation has been hovering around the Bank of Canada's target of 2% for the last year or so, and is expected to fall even further by the end of the year, to around 1.8%. Yes, inflation was much higher from 2021 to 2024, peaking at over 8% in 2022, and we are still feeling the effects of that to some extent. But inflation, in Canada and many other countries around the world, has been effectively tamed.

More to the point, though, data from the Bank of Canada and Statistics Canada, the two most prestigious and reliable sources of financial data for the country, agree that households in every income group, age group and occupational group have seen their after-tax income grow faster than prices over most of the past decade. Net financial assets have also increased for households across all income groups, even when excluding house and pension assets appreciation. In short, we are richer than we have ever been. Data from multiple sources shows that our standard of living has in fact continuously improved recently.

So, why is the cost of living still the major preoccupation of a sizeable majority of Canadians (about 62%), and pretty much everywhere else in the world? Why do we perceive that things are worse than they are, and getting still worse?

Well, the important word there is "perceive". For example, multiple studies have found that consumers' perceptions of inflation are influenced more by prices going up than by prices going down, and most of all by the prices of frequently-purchased goods such as food and gasoline. Their perceptions are also influenced by the rise in house prices, even though inflation only measures the costs associated with housing (utilities, rent, mortgages) and not the price of houses themselves. (In fact, the increase in house prices should make us feel richer, if anything.)

The other thing that is happening is that people's expectations may be overly optimistic, particularly because, although income has grown faster than prices for most Canadians over the period since 2009, it hasn't exceeded prices by quite as much as it did in the preceeding period from 1995 and 2009. (This is a worldwide phenomenon, not just in Canada.) So, if people are comparing their situations with that of their parents, or with earlier in their careers, then they may be disappointed and perceive themselves to be falling behind, even if objectively their situations have actually improved.

Take another circumstance into consideration, namely the ubiquity of social media. Comparing ourselves with others, some of whom may be richer than us, alters our financial reference groups and consumption norms, distorting our perceptions of "normal" and "necessary" consumption and expenditure. For example, many people are buying bigger cars, fancier phones, and travelling abroad more, but if you feel you don't have the money to keep up with these trends, you may well blame the cost of living for not being able to achieve these unrealistic goals.

So, there is a mix of economics, psychology and sociology going on. But the bottom line is that, actually, life has never been so good. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Poilievre.

Meet the Canadian N.I.C.E. Agent

A short sketch on the Canadian improv comedy show This Hour Has 22 Minutes has gone viral - in Canada and America and even further afield.

Trent McClellan is the N.I.C.E. Agent, targeting American tourists, checking their phones (for baby photos), taking selfies, handing out candies, and scoring hugs.

It's two minutes of wwholesome Canadian fun, and it obviously appeals to many.

Danielle Smith apparently hasn't learned from history

I hadn't really thought about it before, but there are some fascinating parallels between Alberta's almost-certain secession referendum later this year and Britain's Brexit vote in 2016.

In those halcyon and naïve days - pre-COVID, pre-Trump, pre-Ukraine war, pre-AI, etc, etc - British Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron merely wanted to renegotiate Britain's relationship with the European Union (EU), mainly to placate a small but vocal majority of ultra-right wingers in his party. He thought that threatening to leave the EU would be a good bargaining tool, and thought, as most people did back then, that there was no way that Britons would be daft enough to actually vote to leave. It was certainly the last thing that Cameron himself wanted.

As we all now know, things didn't pan out quite as expected, largely due to an egregious misinformation campaign by the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. Britain voted narrowly to leave the EU, Johnson became Prime Minister for three wild and largely disastrous years, and Farage lay low for a while before reinventing himself, and is now odds-on favourite to become Britain's next disastrous Prime Minister. How quickly things can go pear-shaped!

Fast forward ten years, and the Canadian province of Alberta is threatening Albexit. Premier Danielle Smith says she is personally against it, and pretty much every serious economist and political analyst has warned that the consequences would be disastrous. All the polls suggest that support in Alberta for leaving Canada is low, around 20%, nothing like the level of support for secession in Quebec back in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.

But Smith has for years been using the threat of separation as leverage to press the federal government for special treatment for Alberta, again largely to placate the hard right-wing hawks in her party. She has even made the process of starting a provincial referendum on the matter much easier than it used to be, hoping to squeeze still more concessions from Ottawa from the increased pressure. It now looks almost certain that a vote will in fact be held later this year.

Sound familiar? What could possibly go wrong?

Well, one thing that could go very wrong is Donald Trump, and Ms. Smith doesn't seem to have factored him into her calculations and machinations. America's most interventionist president has made no secret of his desire to annex Canada, and particularly to get his hands on Alberta's oil. It seems likely that the Trump administration would expend a lot of money and effort in any Alberta separation campaign. At the very least, Trump would probably declare any "stay" vote to be unfair and rigged, creating constitutional chaos and uncertainty. 

(Alberta separatists make no secret of the fact that that have already had several meetings with the US State Department, which, they say, is very supportive of Alberta's secession.)

Could this be Danielle Smith's Cameron moment? We (and Alberta) have to hope not. What is it they say? "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Agentic AI takes over from generative AI

We're only just starting to get our heads around what generative artificial intelligence (AI) is. Now we have to deal with "agentic AI".

While generative AI refers to a computer response to a single query using natural language processing, agentic AI uses sophisticated reasoning and iterative planning to solve much more complex multi-step problems. The idea is that AI serves as your agent to help you make better decisions, employing multiple data sources and third party applications to analyze challenges, develop strategies, and execute tasks, all with minimal human intervention. It learns from the results it achieves, and uses this feedback to improve future plans and actions.

Frankly it's what most people think AI is (or should be), although it's only very recently that AI has become sophisticated enough to deliver on this promise. Generative AI, by comparison, is really just a jumped-up search engine, based on single input prompts. For example, generative AI can used to create some marketing materials, but agentic AI can used to actually deploy these materials, track their performance, and adjust the marketing strategy accordingly.

Agentic AI is being increasingly employed by businesses to personalize customer service, streamline software development, and facilitate patient interactions. Another place it's being used (and this is what initially triggered my interest and concern) is in shopping and merchandizing. 

For example, Canadian shopping goliath Shopify has teamed up with Google and Microsoft to help shoppers find and buy its products more easily and even to help them make purchasing decisions. Shopify merchants can now sell directly through Google's Gemini app and the AI Mode of Google Search, as well as through Microsoft Copilot. Walmart and Mayfair have also recently set up similar agreements. Shopify is even setting up agentic plans with other ecommerce platforms, which will allow online stores throughout the world to sell through Shopify's catalogue, which already comprises billions of products. So, shoppers can buy multiple items from different places without ever leaving the initial AI conversation. Yikes! 

Analysts are saying that this has the potential to revolutionize online shopping and advertising. Sound familiar? The merchants stress that shoppers are in control of the whole process, and that they have the final call. 

But the agentic AI system can even complete checkout on a customer's behalf, based on pre-entered discount codes, loyalty credentials, billing options, and payment information. I do worry that this makes shopping a bit too easy, and I can easily see it spiralling out of control, or even becoming addictive. After all, it's the customer, not the AI, that has to pay the credit card bill at the end of the month. 

I don't have any evidence to back it up, but there just seems a lot that could go wrong with this developmemt.

Ontario moves to a more circular economy (but how does it work?)

As of January 1st this year, the collection of recycling in Ontario (the Blue Box Program) devolves from municipalities - Toronto in my case - to a not-for-profit organization called Circular Materials. In theory, this is a step towards a more circular, less wasteful, economy, but I am reserving judgement until I see how it works in practice.

The idea, so we are told, is not so much to outsource and privatize yet more city services, but to move to a model where the producers of all the packaging that gets recycled are the ones that pay for the recycling, a concept known as "extended producer responsibility" or EPR. Environmentalists are all in favour of EPR as it represents an extension of the "polluter.pays" principle. And it does make a lot of sense to me too, in principle at least. Plus. Circular Materials seem to be able to recycle a few more items than the old City-run program - toothpaste tubes, black plastic containers, nothing too crazy

The change is supposed to save Ontario's municipalities about $200 million a year (about $10 million in the case of the city of Toronto). Historically, under the municipality-operated recycling program, producers only funded about half of the costs, with the municipalities (i.e. taxpayers) paying the other half. Now, the organizations that produce the products and packaging will be responsible for operating and finding the entire program.

However, nothing I have read about it explains just how these cost are charged to the producing companies. It sounds like it would be a logistical nightmare. Does Circular Msterials somehow keep track of every paper, plastic and metal item that runs though its system and note down which producer was responsible for it? Surely not. But how else would it work?

Of course, the producers will no doubt recoup these additional costs through higher consumer prices - they're not charities after all - but the "producer pays" principle has been established, and in theory it is now in their interests to reduce their packaging in order to reduce costs. Except, in practice, as noted, they will probably just pass on the costs to us consumers anyway. But maybe consumers will become more picky about expensive over-packaged products, who knows?

Developing Venezuela won't be as simple as Trump thinks

Part of Donald Trump's back-of-an-envelope "plan" for Venezuela, such as it is, is that the big American oil companies like Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips should invest billions in upgrading the country's oil facilities and related infrastructure, to the tune of $100 billion, he says.

Unfortunately, he forgot to ask those companies if that was OK, and now they are showing themselves extremely leery of any such investment. Exxon CEO Darren Woods put it quite succinctly: "It's uninvestable."

Trump has tried to reassure them, insisting: "You have total safety. You're dealing with us directly and not deal with Venezuela at all. We don't want you to deal with Venezuela." But canny operators like Woods realize that it's not as simple as that, and after having had assets seized there twice already, they are understandbly reticent to do there again. They are probably also wondering whether they can trust Trump's America and more than they could Chávez and Maduro's Venezuela.

It seems quite likely that Trump will find himself bogged down for years or decades in the beleaguered South American country. And, frankly, I hope he does. I just feel sorry for the Venezuelan (and at least half of the American) people.

Russia's hypersonic missile strike, and what it means for the West

Russia has delivered another hypersonic Oreshnik missile strike on Lviv, Ukraine, which most Western countries are are calling out as an unacceptable escalation to the war and cause for major concern in Europe.

I say "most Western countries" because notably absent from the condemnations was the USA, which contented itself with a totally unrelated and, in the circumstances, almost laughable press release by the US Ambassador to NATO, hailing the '"tremendous progress toward a durable, enforceable peace" in Ukraine, adding that "President Trump wants peace in Ukraine". Well, how's that going guys? Talk about tone deaf. 

While the rest of Europe was busy condemning Russia's move and speculating on what it might means for NATO and the EU, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not even mention the Oreshnik strike when speaking to Mark Rutte.(Secretary-General of NATO), preferring to discuss Arctic security. Was he even aware of it? And there was nothing at all from the normally garrulous President Trump.

This is only the second time that Russia has employed its hypersonic missiles. The first was back in November 2024, when Russia's first ever use of the missisle merely targeted an apparently disused factory in Dnipro, and even that event attracted a huge outcry. This one targeted the city of Lviv, just an hour's drive from the Ukrainian border with Poland, and was part of a wider coordinated attack on Kyiv involving over 270 missiles and drones.

So, why is the use of the Oreshnik considered such an escalation? It's partly that Russia's hypersonic (faster than the speed of sound) missiles were developed during the Cold War to deliver a nuclear payload, even though this particular one carried conventional non-nuclear armaments. It's partly that it travels so fast that it is very hard to shoot down and protect against. It's partly that it is very expensive, and so for Russia to be using it they must want to send a very important message. It's partly that it is considered a medium range (600-1,000 miles), or even intermediate range (upto, or even in excess of, 3,000 miles), ballistic missile, with all the connotations for NATO and Europe that brings with it.

And it's partly that it's just a very nasty piece of work. It can rain down up to six independently-targetable "re-entry vehicles", each of which may contain four to six separate ordnances, each of which in turn can be pointed at separate targets. It travels at 8,000 mph (13,000 kph), and soars up above the atmosphere before turning down sharply towards its intended target, making it almost unstoppable by the air defence systems available to Ukraine. It's a fearsome weapon and its potential destructive power is immense, especially given the difficulty of defence against it.

And why now? Well, no-one really understands the mind of Vladimir Putin, any more than they do that of Donald Trump. Moscow's official line is that it is in response to Ukraine's targeting of Putin's residence late last year, even though the CIA has assessed that it was not actually targeting the residence at all. In reality, it is probably just Russia sabre-rattling at a time when one of its allies, Venezuela, is under attack by American forces, and a Russian-flagged tanker carrying Venezuelan oil was intercepted by the Americans in the Atlantic. 

This is especially likely given that this Oreshnik launch, like the one in 2024, carried only inert or "dummy" warheads according to Ukrainian officials. So, this was much more a warning of what Russia could do, to Ukraine and to others, rather than a strategic strike on infrastructure intended to do real damage.

Be that as it may, it seems like the Cold War may be back with a vengeance. And it's already warming up.

Some Republicans dare to cross Trump

It takes a fair amount of self-confidence and gumption for Republicans to vote against Donald Trump these days. So, when five GOP Senators voted with the Democrats yesterday, it was a notable and newsworthy event.

In a motion aimed at barring Trump from further military action in Venezuela without Congressional approval, the Senate (which has a 53-47 Republican majority, even including independents with the opposition) voted 52-47 in favour. Joining all the Democrats were Republican moderates Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, libertarian Rand Paul of Kentucky, populist Josh Hawley of Missouri, and centrist Todd Young of Indiana. Predictably, Trump lashed out, saying that they "should never be elected to office again" (these are member of his own party, the one that he is supposed to be leading).

Republicans asserted themselves on another vote too, also yesterday. The House passed legislation, by a substantial 230-196 margin, to extend expired health care subsidies for those who currently get coverage through the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"). No less than 17 Republican members voted with the Democrats, in spite of the best efforts of Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson over a period of months, and Trump's publicly-expressed opposition to the extension.

The chances of the war powers legislation actually becoming law is slim to none, well, none actually. First, it has to pass in the House of Representatives, where the Republicans have a majority of 218-213, with 4 seats currently vacant (why?). And, while that is maybe conceivable in the current environment, Trump can, and will, still veto it, which would require a two-thirds majority to break, which is a stretch.

As for the health care bill, it must go the other way, to the Senate, where a super-majority of 60 is required (again, why?), which is also a steep path although, these days, stranger things have happened.

Both the House vote on the war powers motion and the Senate vote on health care subsidies will be interesting to see nevertheless. It will give a glimpse into just how pissed off Republicans are at the way Trump and his group of willing lackeys have hijacked the party, and the extent of Trump's power over Congress. Could this be the start of the turn of the tide? We are used to seeing the Republicans vote as a unit behind Trump, mainly because they are shit-scared of crossing him. Are some of the more disaffected members starting to think "thus far and no further".

US pulls out of dozens of international agencies

This is rapidly turning into an American blog, it seems, but there is just so much to comment on in America these days. Every day there is some new outrage, often two or three. It's exhausting enough for a Canadian; imagine what it's like for an American. I don't comment here on even a small fraction of them and it's already overwhelming.

Yesterday, the USA announced it is withdrawing from a whole slew of international organizations, agencies, commissions and advisory panels, on the grounds that Mr. Trump doesn't think he gets enough out of them, or he objects to their focus on "woke" subjects like diversity, climate change and poverty. Trump has no interest in how the rest of the world is faring; he barely has any interest in how his own people are doing. He certainly does not want to spend any money on anything that doesn't have a positive return on investment for the United States of America

The USA has already suspended support for many international and United Nations (UN) agencies like the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA), the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the Paris Climate Accords (aka the Paris Agreement on Climate Change).

To that list, it is now adding another 66 organizations, about half of them affiliated with the United Nations: the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Carbon Free Energy Compact, the UN Conference on Trade and Development, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the United Nations University, the International Cotton Advisory Committee, the International Tropical Timber Organization, the Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation, the Pan-American Institute for Geography and History, the International Law Commission, the Peacebuilding Commission, the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies, and the International Lead and Zinc Study Group, among many others. 

I've never heard of half of these organizations and have no idea what some of them do. I'm sure Trump doesn't either, but I'm sure their members do, and can explain and justify their existence. But, basically, anything with the word "international" or "cooperation" in it is now gone. Come to think of it, anything to do with science, facts or reason. In US government terms, it is a "Withdrawal from Wasteful, Ineffective or Harmful International Organizations", and they say they need no other justification to pull out than that the groups "no longer serve American interests".

And, of course, they are taking their money with them. As the richest country on earth, they have long been the largest contributors and financial mainstays of these organization, and the US's withdrawal may well mean that many of these august and well-meaning bodies may have to close down completely. The UN is currently looking to the courts to enforce what Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls the US's "legal obligation" to keep funding the groups. Good luck with that.

The Trump administration can't decide  whether it wants to curl up in its little shell and pursue isolationist policies, or to go full interventionist, so it has decided to do both. Nobody has a clue what they are doing any more, or why, or what they will do next.

Citing the Monroe Doctrine does not make Trump's Venezuela stunt right or legal

The Americans - well, let's be clearer: SOME Americans - are fond of invoking the Monroe Doctrine as a kind of all-encompassing justification for some of the most egregious foreign policy initiatives of the 20th and 21st centuries, including, most recently Trump's invasion of Venezuela and his threats to annex Greenland.

The problem is that the 1823 Monroe Doctrine (and the 1904 Roosevelt Corollary that followed it) was never very defensible, and Trump's willful misinterpretation of it (the Trump Corollary" or "Donroe Doctrine" as he calls it) moves it even further from a reasonable justification or vindication for problematic foreign policy. It was never a binding law, a legal principle to be followed, or a foundational tenet of US foreign policy; it was only ever a notional statement of intent, as applied to a very specific situation. In the modern world, it is indisputably an anachronism.

The Monroe Doctrine was formulated by the early American President James Monroe to promote regional stability at a time when many European colonies in the Caribbean and South America were declaring their independence. It was intended to prevent European powers from re-colonizing parts of the Americas, by presenting the United States as a kind of police force for countries in (very broadly speaking) their "backyard". It effectively unilaterally asserted the whole of the Western Hemisphere as America's rightful "sphere of influence". At the time, many newly-independent Latin-American nations welcomed Munroe's declaration as affirming their own freedoms, even though Munroe himself saw it as merely stamping out any threats to US "peace and safety", however improbable those were.

The Roosevelt Corollary expanded this vision of the US as an "international police force", and would serve as a pretext for any number of inexcusable American interventions, occupations and "gunboat diplomacy". 

The Trump Corollary, that prioritizes American-led efforts to combat mass migration, drug-trafficking, and the "hostile" ownership of key assets, moves even further from the original Monroe Doctrine, which itself was largely indefensible, effectively serving as an excuse or justification for American imperialism and good old-fashioned bullying. 

Mr. Trump essentially considers the whole of the Western Hemisphere to be de facto under American control. No amount of referencing of historical documents can possibly make that true or right.

The complex dance of Middle Eastern politics just got even more complicated

With Trump sucking all the oxygen out of the media room, it's easy to forget that there are other things going on around the world, some of them almost as bad as what Trump is bringing.

For instance, did you know that Saudi Arabia is currently bombing the United Arab Emirates. Sounds improbable, right? Saudi and UAE are anti-Iran allies, no? It's not just that UAE and Saudi Arabia are majority Sunni Muslim countries, while Iran is largely Shia. But both countries are strongly opposed to Iran's regional influence, and its support for insurgent groups like the Houthis in Yemen.

So, why would the Saudi Royal Air force be dropping bombs on UAE troops in the Yemeni port city of Mukalla. Well, it turns out that UAE is also supporting, financially and militarily, the Southern Transitional Council (STC), the secessionist group that has effectively carved out a statelet in South Yemen, right on Saudi Arabia's southern border. 

The Saudis have been fighting against Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen since 2015 in a kind of Sunni-Shia proxy war. The STC's call for an independent Yemeni state has complicated an already difficult situation

But when Saudi Arabia recently found out that UAE was sending armoured vehicles and heavy weaponry to the STC, it decided to intervene in dramatic fashion. Rightly or wrongly, the Saudi kingdom views the presence of a separatist entity on its southern border as an existential threat. 

The Saudi attack was clearly strong enough to force UAE forces to quit Mukalla completely, and its personnel were seen in a rather chaotic retreat out of the area. The Riyadh-backed National Shield Forces (Daraa al-Watan) has moved into the vacuum created. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is also somewhere in the mix, looking to capitalize on any confusion and dissent. Man, Middle Eastern politics is complicated!

Surprisingly, the Trump administration has had nothing to say about all this. It's not clear if they are even aware of it. Israel is of course worried that the once monumental Arabic anti-Iran front now appears fractured and fighting among themselves. The complex dance that is the Middle East has just made another pirouette.

Trump seems to be serious about Greenland

After Venezuela, what next? There seems no end to Trump's megalomaniac imperialist tendencies, and his administration seems completely unwilling or unable to reign him in.

So: Colombia? Cuba? Greenland? Iran? Mexico? Canada? Trump talked about all of these countries and "failed states" in an unhinged presser after the Venezuela coup.

Perhaps the most likely next target is Greenland, and this has set alarm bells ringing like no other. Trump has repeatedly reiterated his "need" for Greenland: "We do need Greenland, absolutely". A White House statement made the rampant US position very clear: "The President and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal and, of course, utilizing the US military is always an option at the Commander-In-Chief's disposal". Of course.

Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, has been since 1814. It is therefore part of the European Union and part of NATO. And there's the rub. A major member of the NATO alliance claiming the sovereign territory of another member is uncharted territory, and may well spell the beginning of the end of the alliance. As Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen put it, "If the United States chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops". Trump appears not to care about that prospect, but the rest of the world certainly does. And the likes of Russia and China definitely care. The alliance seems all but paralyzed at the moment, uncertain how seriously to take Trump's threats.

The answer is "very seriously". In a late night Truth Social post, Trump has declared that Greenland is now an American "protectorate", and who is to say him nay? If he says it, is it true? No-one was ever quite sure if Trump planned to acquire Greenland, which he insists he "needs" for national security reasons, by force, coercion or just by buying off the population with bribes. But maybe he doesn't need to resort to any of those tactics.

Trump has repeatedly said that the US needs Greenland "for defense", and that it is "covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place". And the USA does have a military base there, focussing on missile detection and space surveillance. But many analysts think that Trump's obsessiveness about Greenland is more to do with its natural resources, particularly rare earth minerals.

A complicating factor is that a majority of Greenlanders do in fact support seceding from Denmark. But an even greater majority rejects the idea of becoming part of the US. 

Militarily, neither Denmark nor any other NATO would be able to resist the USA. As one European official out it: "We're won't be able to defend Greenland. Are you kidding?" But, as the German Foreign Minister pointed out recently, technically Greenland falls under Article 5 of the NATO agreement, which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all, and the other members are obliged to respond. So, NATO would be at war with the USA?

Politically and diplomatically, many countries are making their positions clear. Just yesterday, the leaders of the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Denmark came together to issue a joint statement saying, "Greenland belongs to its people, and only Denmark and Greenland can decide on matters concerning their relations". Even Canada's notoriously circumspect Prime Minister Mark Carney has come out publicly to say that "the future of Greenland is a decision for Greenland and Denmark exclusively", and moved to establish a new Canadian consulate on the island.

All of this is if course true, but what is the practical import of such declarations? None of the tub-thumping coming from other supportive members is realistically going to have any impact at all on a man who only hears what he wants to hear, and who is oblivious to any normal logical, or even legal, arguments. 

The indications of Trump's intentions have been there all along. At first, it seemed like a throwaway line, poor-taste joke of the kind he excels in, kind of like calling Canada the 51st state. But sometimes those jokes become real threats. Next he despatched Trump Jr. to do a recce of the place, needless of the bad optics. Then he installed Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry as his "special envoy" to Greenland (Landry calls it a "volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the US"). And now Stephen Miller's annoying wife is posting pictures of Greenland swathed in the Stars and Stripes on X. The writing seems to be on the wall of a thousand Facebook accounts.

If Trump play his trump card by tying US possession of Greenland to American security guarantees for Ukraine, and even interrupting intelligence sharing and weapons sales to the Ukraine cause, as some suggest he is likely to do in the next few days, then NATO'S goose is all but cooked. What a mess!

Realpolitik trumps principles in reactions to Venezuelan invasion

International reaction to Trump's latest outrage - the US invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of its president (and his wife!) - has been predictably mixed.

Russia and China, of course, publicly condemned it out of hand, calling it "an act of armed aggression", although they are doubtless rubbing their hands in glee in private as Trump is engaging in just the kind of cynical and illegal unilateral action and regime change they themselves would like to enact in Ukraine and Taiwan. Anything that works to normalize such actions, however illegal they technically are, is a step in their favour.

Iran, which has its own worries about American aggression, also came out strongly, calling Trump's move a "flagrant violation of the country's national sovereignty".

Most Latin American leaders, painfully conscious of their "there but for the grace of God go we" situation, also condemned the invasion. Brazil's Lula saying that it "crossed an line", and marked "the first step toward a world of violence, chaos and instability". Colombia's Gustavo Petro, who must be worried that he might be next after Trump's recent comments, called it "an assault on the sovereignty"of Latin America. Venezuelan ally Cuba's Diaz-Canel, also himself firmly in Trump's crosshairs, called the act "a criminal attack".

More distant South American countries could afford to be a bit more conciliatory. Chile's Boric contented himself with a relatively innocuous and non-specific "concern and condemnation" comment. Uruguay similarly talked about "attention and serious concern", although it "rejects, as it always has, military intervention". Trump buddy and fellow right-wing populist Javier Milei of Argentina, other other hand, positively gushed in Orwellian fashion about "freedom moves forward" and "long live freedom".

Ditto with Israeli Prime Minister and best buddy Benjamin Netanyahu, who enthused about Trump's "bold and historic leadership on behalf of freedom and justice". But what would he know about "freedom and justice", and who would ever expect him to criticize Trump on anything.

In Europe, there was a mixed bag of reactions, mainly involving platitudes about respecting international law, but tempered with a recognition that Maduro was indeed a bad man. France's Macron, so often a critic of Trump, said that the transition of power "must be peaceful, democratic and respectful of the will of the Venezuelan people", even though it clearly hasn't been. Germany's Merz claimed that the legality of the US operation was "complex" (er, not really) and that international law in general must apply (er, that ship has already sailed).

Top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas merely repeated the EU's theoretical position that Maduro lacked legitimacy, but that there should be a peaceful transition of power and that the principles of international law should be respected (once again, they haven't been - why do they not come out and say so). 

The UK's Keir Starmer, whose tenure had been marked by his rather pusillanimous collaborationist approach to Trump, refused to be drawn on the matter of international law (of which he claimed to be a "lifelong advocate"), and was at pains to distance the UK from any involvement in the strikes. He too would like to see a "safe and peaceful transition to a legitimate government that reflects the will of the Venezuelan people". Well, yes, but what about the fact that somebody just militarily invaded an independent sovereign country and abducted its president.

Norway's foreign minister came closest to outright European criticism: "The American intervention in Venezuela is not in accordance with international law". Quite. 

The UN's Antonio Guterres' spokesperson, for his part, said that he is "deeply concerned that the rules of international law have not been respected", and that the American intervention sets a dangerous precedent". Quite, quite. A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner warns that the US actions have made "all States less safe around the world".

And Canada? "Canada calls on all parties to respect international law and we stand by the people of Venezuela and their desire to live in a peaceful and democratic society" (from Foreign Minister Anand). "Canada attaches great importance to resolution of crises through multilateral engagement, and is in close contact with international partners about ongoing developments" (from Prime Minister Carney). Well, it doesn't get much more vague, safe, non-committal and middle-of-the-road than that, does it? I think they are being especially careful because, if America takes control of Venezuela's huge reserves of heavy crude oil and sanctions are dropped, it may well reduce its imports of Canadian heavy crude oil.

Basically, the reactions were largely predictable, and based on the extent to which various countries feel able to criticize Trump, and the extent to which they are scared of him and his reaction to their reactions. There has been very little in the way of principled criticism of an illegal attack on a sovereign state by a rogue actor whose behaviour is lurching further and further from international norms. Realpolitik rules the day in the age of Trump.

America itself is, as ever, split along ideological lines, with Republicans and the right-wing press stressing that this was a bold but necessary "law enforcement" action, tied to longstanding drug-trafficking charges laid against Maduro. Democrats see it more as an illegal imperialistic regime change campaign, and more about Venezuela's oil reserves than drugs. (In his more unguarded moments, Trump has publicly admitted it's really all about the oil, in case anyone was in any doubt.) There have also been a louder and louder calls for (yet another) impeachment of Trump over the illegal Venezuela actions.

"The President does not have unilateral authority to invade foreign countries, oust their governments, and seize their resources" was one typical comment from a Democratic congressman. On the other hand, "President Trump used his constitutional authority to arrest Maduro and save American lives" sums up the Republican take on the events. Or, as Secretary of state Marco Rubio puts it, "We're not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operations for adversaries, competitors nd rivals of the United States", suggesting that they see the whole of the Americas as belonging under the US's "sphere of influence" (i.e. control). This will do nothing to unite this hopelessly divided country, that's for sure.

There is even division within Venezuela. The official line is that this was a "cowardly kidnapping", although acting president Delcy Rodriguez seems resigned to "working with" (i.e. obeying) Trump, particularly given Trump's overt threats against her if she doesn't toe the American line, despite her combative tones in public). Many Venezuelans opposed to Maduro see it as a positive change that would not have happened any other way. But many others hate the way it occurred, and still others worry that it will destabilize the country even more than before. A smooth and peaceful transition seems extremely unlikely according to most analysts.

Like the world needs more instability right now...

UPDATE

And just for good measure, here is part of the text of Article 2 of the United Nations Charter, to which the USA is a signatory:

3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered.

4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

'Nuff said.

New Finch West LRT not so rapid

The Finch West LRT (Line 6) opened a couple of weeks ago to a certain amount of fanfare. After all, it was the first rapid transit line to open in Toronto since the Sheppard subway line (aka the Sheppard Stubway, for its short and largely redundant route) over two decades ago. Line 6 began construction in 2016, nearly 10 years after it was first proposed. And it opened before the beleaguered Eglinton Line 5, which was begun 5 years earlier. Things take a long time to get built in Toronto...

The new light rail line runs 10.3 km from the Yonge subway line at Finch West station to Humber College north station in Toronto's far northwest. It was designed to link some of Toronto's more needy suburbs to the main subway system, and to improve the long commute downtown. It runs above ground on the central median of busy Finch Avenue and incorporates 18 stops.

But it also opened to a lot of criticism, mainly for its slowness. Part of the problem is that, although the line is segregated from the regular traffic, it does not take advantage of any signal priority, so it is often to be found idling at traffic lights. It also doesn't seem to go very fast even when it is able to, and is constantly overtaken by cars and even the buses it is designed to largely replace. It was theoretically supposed to complete the 10km route in about 34 minutes; in practice, it takes 55-60 minutes.

To underline this slowness, runner Mac Bauer, who blogs under the name 514runner, and has made a name for himself running - and beating - Toronto's streetcars, raced the Finch LRT on foot and beat it by a healthy 18 minutes (that day, the LRT took an hour and four minutes to complete the 10.3 km route).

Now, I'm pretty sure that Mac didn't bother waiting for the traffic lights, but his stunt certainly shone a light on the challenges of the new LRT, and Toronto's transit system in general.

Does a liberal arts education set you up for modern-day employment?

Recent US data suggests that a liberal arts education may not be such a bad thing after all as regards employment prospects, flying in the face of conventional wisdom.

For example, art history graduates are more likely to be employed than computer engineering grads (3% unemployment, compared to 7.5%). The theory is that liberal arts graduates are more adaptable and flexible, able to move between different job types and industries. They also tend to be more creative and willing to think outside the box than computer science geeks (sorry, grads).

Other research papers suggest that jobs requiring AI tools are much more likely to require social, cognitive, language and interpersonal skills, all areas in which arts graduates supposedly excel, and computing graduates most definitely do not.

It all seems a bit improbable to me, but that's what we're told. Certainly, my 30-year old daughter has many friends who are in full employment, but the only ones who are buying houses are coding and computer science specialists...