Trump selects a Surgeon General nominee purely based on merit

And now, right back to... Donald Trump. 

Trump's new nominee for the vacant position for Surgeon General is someone called Nicole Saphier. You probably won't have heard of her unless you watch Fox News. She's a radioligist (so, almost a doctor) who does an occasional segment on the right-wing news show in which she mainly engages in culture war issues, and only incidentally in "medical" matters, where she espouses some rather iffy stances on vaccinations and transgender ideology, among other things.

But you only have to see a picture of Ms. Saphier to get a pretty clear idea of why Trump selected her. The man has a certain recognizable style. Are you seeing a trend here?

I kind of feel sorry for the poor woman in some ways. How is she supposed to head up a huge medical bureaucracy with zero experience and not much medical knowledge? What could possibly go wrong? There again, she could always say no...

UAE leaves OPEC - should we care?

As of tomorrow, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will officially leave the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the cartel that has historically exerted a strong influence over global oil prices through its ability to impose production quotas over its members. This is probably not going to change your life overnight. In fact, you're probably not even going to see any change in gas prices, at least in the near term, and certainly not while the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed. But in terms of geopolitics and the global economy, it could be significant in the longer term. It has been called "the beginning of the end of OPEC".

UAE is OPEC third or fourth biggest crude oil producer after Saudi Arabia, Iraq and maybe Iran, and has been a member of OPEC (and the expanded OPEC+ group) since 1967, soon after the group's inception in 1960. 

Crucially, though, the UAE's "spare" oil capacity is second only to Saudi Arabia's, making it an important "swing producer". It has a sustainable production capacity of 4.85 million barrels a day, but due to its OPEC quota it only actually produces 3.4 million barrels a day. OPEC (effectively Saudi Arabia) is therefore causing it to lose a lot of potential revenue which, given that oil accounts for about a third of its GDP, has always rankled. 

The UAE must also be painfully conscious that, as hydrocarbons are substituted by other energy sources, oil will not always be such a sure source of income. It makes sense, then, for the UAE to maximize its income from its oil reserves now, before demand craters.

UAE's exit widens its rift with Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader of OPEC, and deals a considerable blow to the influential oil producers' group and its ability to dictate oil prices. Freed from the constraints of OPEC, the UAE will almost certainly increase its crude oil output, which could have a significant effect on global prices.

The move is also seen as a win for Donald Trump, who has long railed against OPEC and its price-fixing. Trump needs gas and diesel prices to fall before the mid-term elections, and increasesd oil production by UAE could help with that.

UAE has long been a valued ally of the US, and even of Israel in recent years. UAE's decision to move now, with a US-Israeli war against Iran going on, can be no coincidence. (It has publicly complained that Saudi Arabia has offered it no support during Iran's bombardment, while Israel cleverly extended its protective Iron Dome to the Emirates.)

OPEC has gradually been losing influence for some years now. Back in the 1970s, it controlled over 50% of the world's oil; today, with the huge production increases in the USA, Canada, Russia and China, among others, that figure is closer to 30%. Several members have already defected: Indonesia left in 2016, Qatar left in 2019, Ecuador in 2020, and Angola in 2024. UAE's exit is a much bigger deal than any these. 11 members remain. And next? Almost certainly Venezuela.

Two tech billionaires face off

The press is fairly salivating over the prospect of two tech-bro billionaires facing off agaist each other in court in California. It involves betrayal, deceit and unbridled ambition. And lots and lots of money.

Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman used to be best buddies. Musk actually bankrolled much of OpenAI's early research in the heady days of 2015, back when it was an idealistic not-for-profit looking to save AI (and the world) from the rapacious designs of the less caring technology companies that were starting to emerge.

It soon became apparent, though, that a lot of money could be on the table for Altman and OpenAI, as the company's ChatGPT became the world's go-to AI platform, and Altman's altruistic vision wobbled. The company converted to a for-profit corporation last year, and is now valued at nearly a trillion dollars. Altman, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, and many others in the organization have become very rich indeed. (Altman's own fortune is estimated to be around $3 billion.)

Musk, the world's richest man, whose own net worth is heading inexorably toward the trillion dollar mark, has accused Altman and Brockman of double-crossing him, and of abandoning the company's founding vision of "an altruistic steward of a revolutionary technology". The picture of Musk, not known for altruism himself, taking the moral high ground is a confounding one. Plus, Musk now has his own AI company, xAI.

It's not going too well for Musk thus far. He has abandoned his original bid for $100 billion in damages after a series of pre-trial.rulings went against him. He is now seeking an unspecified amount of money to be paid into the charitable arm of Open AI (which still exists). He is also looking to oust Altman from OpenAI's board because, after all, this is personal.

The trial is expected to provide some riveting theatre as the two larger-than-life characters face off. As US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers says, "Part of this is about whether a jury believes the people who will testify and whether they are credible". In his opening remarks, Musk laid out his views: "The fate of civilization is at stake". Altman, for his part, gushed about Musk: "You're my hero". Yikes!

Musk has other ongoing legal challenges too: he was recently held liable by another jury for defrauding investors during his $44 billion takeover of Twitter in 2022. Altman and OpenAI are also being sued by residents of Tumbler Ridge, BC, after a mass shooting that they claim should have been prevented by OpenAI. It's a messy old (new) world out there.

Maybe we shouldn't really care that two such uncongenial figures are having at each other like slightly grubby quondam titans. But it is hard to look away.

How bad is the Iranian economy?

Here's an eye-opening article about the parlous state of Iran's economy after two months of battering by American and Israeli forces. Spoiler: it's substantially worse than I thought.

At least a million jobs have been lost directly due to the war, and 10-12 million - almost half of Iran's labour force - are at risk from the ripple effects.

Although Israel claims to have landed precision strikes on Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard facilities early in the war, in fact their air strikes destroyed or damaged some 20,000 civilian factories, hobbling about 20% of the country's manufacturing capacity, particularly in the essential pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals, aluminum, cement and steelmaking sectors. This has crippled Iran's main non-oil exports, and raised domestic prices for everything from plastics and pipes to fabrics, packaging and construction materials. There was little or no military targeting involved in this; this was an opportunistic Israel gleefully moving to incapacitate its arch-enemy's economy under cover of US bluster, while it thought it could get away with it.

Iran's internet has been largely shut down since the start of the war (or even before, during the domestic protests that preceded it), gutting all the small- and medium-sized businesses that rely on online sales. 

Before the war, Iran made about $98 billion in exports, just under half of it from oil. A good proportion of that is now gone, mainly due to the US blockade on exports, with no end in sight (although actually about half of Iran's non-oil trade goes overland and through Caspian Sea ports, and not through the blockaded Strait of Hormuz).

Pre-war, Iran relied substantially on the United Arab Emirates for up to a third of its imports. Since the US strikes, it has had to retaliate however it can, including strikes on UAE, leading that country to cut off all trade with Iran. No more imports.

The city of Kashan, where most of Iran's lucrative carpet production was centred, has all but closed down. Exports have plummeted and domestic sales petered out. Prices for synthetic fibres have surged by 30-50%, largely due to ongoing hits on Iran's petrochemical facilities.

Most new construction has ground to a halt, with priority going to the reconstruction of essential infrastructure. The price of iron sheeting has more than doubled. Savings of individuals and companies alike are starting to run out, those that had any.

Even with all that litany of grimness, Iranian officials are however still trying to reassure the public that the country can withstand all the economic pain. Certainly, if any country could, it is Iran. After decades of sanctions, the country has built up a lot of resilience, and is well-prepared for "worst case scenarios". It maintains large reserves of vital supplies, and even resources like electrical machinery, cement, iron and steel, for just such an emergency. The US has clearly been shocked by how resilient Iran has proved, although a bit more inquiry and less hubris could easily have alerted them to that.

Such reserves and resilience are not, of course, unlimited. While it is thought that Iran could still bounce back once the war ends, that would largely depend on whether international sanctions were lifted, and that in turn depends on a whole load of other things, things that are currently unknown. Whether Iran can outlast the United States - which has its own constraints and determining factors - is an open question.

Alternative climate conference gets under way in Santa Marta

I have neglected to mention it thus far, but I would be remiss to ignore the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels, happening right now in Santa Marta, Colombia.

With all that they need to come up with a more succinct name or acronym (FICJTAFF?), this seems like a wholly laudable attempt to rescue the climate action movement from the tyranny of the majority. While great things were once hoped for from the UN Climate Change Conferences (or COPS - Conference of the Parties), in recent years they have been increasingly taken over by oil-producing countries that either don't believe in, or don't care about, climate change.

The Netherlands and Colombia have been at the forefront of this new initiative. Over 50 countries are attending the Santa Marta conference, a so-called "coalition of do-ers", representing almost 50% of the global population. Sub-national actors, Indigenous Peoples, social and youth movements, and invited non-governmental organizations will also be represented. 

The USA, under the climate-denying Trump administration, is not even invited, and neither are a whole swathe of other potentially obstructive countries like Middle Eastern oil producers. There is no China, no Russia, to veto promising motions. 

Despite its embarrassing back-pedalling on climate issues under Mark Carney, Canada is indeed attending, although it is sending a team of negotiators rather than higher level government ministers. Along with Nigeria and Australia, it is one of the few oil and gas producers at the summit.

The concept is to see what progressive climate action ideas can be developed without the constant drag and naysaying of the more regressive elements. There will be no flashy binding global treaties, but instead is focussed more on actionable, non-consensus-based pathways. It is seen as a precursor to future negotiations, rather than a final decision-making body. It hopes to set targets and advance concrete pathways to transition away from fossil fuels, which increasingly seems like the only real solution to climate change.

Should we expect much from the conference, other than virtue-signalling and bromides? Is it just a choir preaching to itself? Maybe this first conference might not produce too much, but it will be interesting to see what momentum it generates. And, anyway, do you still expect anything from UN COP conferences?

To tell you the truth, it's nice to be reporting on something other than the United States right now. That feels like a win in itself.

Shells on a beach = death threat?

More US news, I'm afraid (it's hard to look away).

Soon after President Trump's initial attempt to go after ex-FBI boss and one-time nemesis James Comey fell through when the courts dismissed the case with prejudice, the man has prevailed upon his Justice Department to indict Comey all over again, this time claiming that Comey threatened his life. Because, more than anything else, Trump hates to be thwarted, and he will spend million of dollars of taxpayers' money to wreak vengeance.

And, if the last attempt at indictment was flimsy and poorly executed, this one's going to be a doozy. Comey's supposed "threat" was a picture he shared on social media about a year ago, quickly removed, of some seashells on a beach forming the numbers "8647".

Confused? So was I. Apparently, the "47" is supposed to represent Donald Trump (the 47th US president, get it?) And the "86" is apparently slang in some language or other for "remove" or "take out". (I don't know. I don't make this stuff up.) 

So, DOJ's allegation is that, by sharing the image, Comey was personally threatening to kill Donald Trump. A stretch? Just a bit. At worst, it was Comey's hamfisted attempt to call for Trump's impeachment or removal from office. It would be hard to argue that it was a call for his death. It's no secret that Comey dislikes Trump (and vice versa), but a call for assassination? Hardly.

Comey claims that he was not aware of the possible violent implications of the image, thinking it was just a political statement of some sort. (Why would a public person publicly share a political statement that they don't even understand?) He says he took it down from his Instagram page as soon as someone explained to him how it might be interpreted.

So, I guess we'll see whether putting a few shells on a beach constitutes a treasonous threat. It would be the damnedest thing, don't you think?

UPDATE

It turns out the term "86" is in regular use in the restaurant trade, particularly in New York, but it has little or nothing to do with threatenimg to kill someone.

What it actually refers to is when an item is out of stock and needs to be re-ordered or replaced. It was first used back in the 1930s, and there is some debate as to whether it was first used to refer to the 86th item on Delmonico restaurant's menu, which was always the most popular item and the first one to sell out, or to a speakeasy called Chumleys which had a side entrance at 86 Bedford, which was always the best exit to use if the police raided. 

Apparently, over time, the restaurant idiom was occasionally used metaphorically, to mean get rid of or fire someone, or just make something disappoear, nothing more sinister than that.

Either way, there seems no way that James Comey (or Trump, for that matter).would have had any knowledge of such an abstruse expression, if indeed that is what the "8647" is supposed to refer to.

NASA chief wants to make Pluto a planet again

Back in 2006, poor Pluto was officially demoted from a planet to a dwarf planet. Generations of school children who had learned the mnemonic "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" have had to re-learn it as "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nothing".

Not a big deal, you might think. But it was controversial then, and apparently it remains controversial to this day. The argument was that a planet has to fulfill three (admittedly rather arbitrary) criteria: to orbit the sun (not another planet), to be massive enough to have been made fully spherical by its own gravity, and to have cleared its orbit of debris. Pluto, they said, failed to fulfill the third criterion, sharing an orbit as it does with the asteroids, icy bodies and other dwarf planets of the Kuiper Belt. 

The curremt (Trump-appointed) NASA chief Jared Isaacman is particularly exercised by the subject, and is making it his mission to reinstate Pluto as a full planet. The odds are against it, though, as the decision rests with the  International Astonomical Union (IAU), a worldwide group of professional astronomers whose job it is to define and name celestial objects and surface features. (Isaacman, on the other hand, is a billionaire finance-bro and a "private astronaut" -  a typical Trump nominee.)

It probably shouldn't surprise us that a Trump appointee is looking to turn back progress. It won't surprise me too much if he turns out to be a flat-earther too.

Does MLS own the Vancouver Whitecaps?

Rumour has it that Major League Soccer (MLS) is considering relocating the Vancouver Whitecaps franchise to somewhere more profitable, like maybe Las Vegas. They say the "long-term health" of the league is at stake. They say that "stadium economics, scheduling restrictions and a lack of government and corporate support" will make keeping the Whitecaps in Vancouver very difficult.  

The current owners, a group of Canadian businessmen, have put the team up for sale, although they do say their priority is to keep the team in Vancouver. There are currently only two Canadian teams in the MLS league, Toronto (added as an expansion team in 2007) and Vancouver (added in 2011), and losing one would be pretty hard for the Canadian psyche. 

Although the Whitecaps had their most successful season ever last year, only falling to Miami in the championship game, and they currently sit second in the league this year, their on-field success has not translated into all-important revenue, in which stakes they sit at the very bottom of the league, trailing much worse clubs in the middle of the standings.

I confess the whole idea of "moving" a team from one city to another seems bizarre to me, coming from a British background. I can''t imagine "moving" Manchester City to Blackpool, or Chelsea to Portsmouth!? But I guess I just don't understand the franchise business model of North American sports. Certainly teams (or franchises) do get moved all the time: the Brooklyn Dodgers became the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals, the Washington Senators became the Texas Rangers, etc, etc.

But what is the role of MLS in this current case? Google AI says that "Major League Soccer (MLS) does not own the Whitecaps directly, though it operates under a single entity structure where owners are investors in the league". The best explanation I can find for this confusing claim comes from Medium.com: "Unlike the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), National Basketball Association (NBA), and National Hockey League (NHL), the MLS is considered a Single-Entity business model. This structure allow the teams to be considered "individual investors" of the league, allowing Major League Soccer to be the sole owners of all 29 teams and not be considered a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC)", although the article then goes on to question the legality of this Single-Entity status.

So, clear as mud. I still don't know how it works, but it does seem that MLS somehow has "full autonomy" over business deals, exclusivity player negotiations, and many other aspects. Weird.

Yet another productivity analysis

It's a constant taunt of the Canadian right wing that, after ten years of Liberal rule, Canada's productivity is poor (the worst in this cherry-picked category, the lowest in that, you know how it goes). The unstated implication is that the Conservatives, somehow, would have done a much better job. 

Productivity - GDP per capita, or sometimes per hour worked - has become the tub to be thumped in recent years by many in the business community, one metric to rule them all. But it's a notoriously blunt instrument, open to all manner of misinterpretations and vagaries.

The redoubtable Visual Capitalist has produced an updated analysis of global productivity, which yields some eye-popping, but actually pretty explicable, results. Way out at the top are not the USA or China, or even Sweden, but Ireland, Norway and Luxembourg. But this doesn't necessarily mean that Irish workers are much more efficient or hard-working than those in the rest of the world, or even that they are better at harnessing technology.

In the cases of Ireland and Luxembourg, their productivity dominance is almost entirely due to their status as tax havens. Both countries host the headquarters of many multinational companies, particularly in the pharmaceutical and technology sectors in Ireland's case and finance in Luxembourg's, so most of the work that generates such high productivity figures is actually done elsewhere. In both cases, productivity drops dramatically when measured using Gross National Income, rather than Gross Domestic Product.

In Norway's case, it's productivity is more to do with its high-value energy industry, although some of it is "genuine" productivity efficiency, and its adoption of capital-intensive and knowledge-based work. Most of the other (mainly European and Scandinavian) countries in the top ten or twenty similarly benefit from those same choices or circumstances.  

And Canada? In this particular listing of 37 countries, which is based on GDP per hours worked in purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars, Canada comes in at a middle-of-the-road No. 18. This is above the OECD average, and about the same as the UK, Italy and Spain. It is just below Australia, although significantly above the likes of Israel, Japan, New Zealand Mexico. Canada also comes in well below arch-rivals the USA which, at No. 7 according to this metric, is the only non-European country in the top 15. (China is not included in this analysis.)

In general, countries whose economies are more reliant on agriculture, tourism, or lower-value services tend to report lower productivity levels, while those which are more based on technology, finance, pharmaceuticals and energy typically show higher productivity. So, such lists are perhaps not all that useful.

White House Press Secretary makes a strangely prescient comment

As per usual with American politics, you just can't make this stuff up.

Minutes before a gunman burst into the White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington DC, guns a-blazing, a heavily-pregnant White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt made some rather prescient comments:

"This speech tonight will be classic Donald J. Trump. It will be funny. It will be entertaining. There will be some shots fired tonight in the room."

Now, that's not just prescient, it's also a very strange choice of words. Not to say downright suspicious. In different circumstances, Ms. Leavitt might well have been bundled off in a police car for her comments, baby bump and all. As Trump's sycophant-in-chief, though, she is presumably above suspicion.

Unless, of course, the shooting was staged, and Ms. Leavitt just blurted her words out accidentally or unthinkingly. Or, conceivably, she was being too cute by half (unlikely - "cute" is not an adjective that applies to her hawkish and aggressive public persona).

How the USA thinks of itself (and everyone else)

I've lost track of how many times I have written a post criticizing the tone-deafness of the Trump administration. By which I mean not just Trump himself, but everyone who clings to his coattails, believing that Trump's influence is enough to protect them from criticism and censure, and exempts them from the need to observe common courtesy and shared values.

Case in point: an internal Pentagon email from top policy advisor Elbridge Colby outlining measures the United States could take to chastise NATO members they see as difficult or insufficiently supportive of radical US military ventures.

Thus, countries like Spain, which has been outspoken in its opposition of Trump's illegal and ill-advised forays into unilateral invasion and regime change, could, the memo suggests, be suspended completely from the alliance (actually, it couldn't legally). Countries like the UK, which had the audacity to refuse the US use of its overseas bases, could be browbeaten by a public "review" of its claims to the Falkland Islands. Etc, etc.

This shows a mind-boggling ignorance of the rules of NATO (or an assumption that the US can just flout said rules with impunity). There is no requirement for other countries to follow America into its wars of choice - Section 5 of the NATO charter (which states that an attack against one member of the alliance should be considered an attack against all) only applies where member states are attacked by outside actors, not where a member state chooses to go to war unilaterally.

But the guy, whoever he is, is a high-ranking employee of the Pentagon. He must know (mustn't he?) that what he is suggesting is wrong - morally, legally, strategically, any way you want to think of it. But the US under Trump has its head so far up its arse that it cares not a jot for such niceties and inconveniences as the law and morality. That's the only explanation I can postulate for such arrant nonsense.

Plug-in solar is coming...

Plug-in solar is coming! I've seen that headline in multiple places recently. And it is kind of a big deal, in a small way.

So, what is plug-in solar anyway? It's "a simple, reliable way to save money by generating your own electricity" from small-scale modular solar panels that connect (via an inverter) to a standard power outlet in your home. It's an easy and affordable way to get started generating your own power. 

Solar panels can be put on any accessible flat surface, such as a balcony, in a front or back yard, or on a roof deck. Unlike a full-scale roof-top grid-tied system, installation is pretty straightforward and can be done without engaging a contractor and a whole lot of bureaucracy. Even renters and apartment dwellers can now reduce their grid dependence.

Plug-in panels come in a range of output sizes from 200W to 1,600W (as compared to a typical rooftop installation of 3,000W to 9,000W), and cost from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. It's not intended to power your whole home, merely to reduce load (particularly during peak times), and to save the consumer some money. Even a small 200W unit can power a fridge or overhead lighting, or be used to recharge laptops, phones, etc, or it can be used remotely to power camping appliances, a small boat, etc. Larger units can of course power larger and more power-hungry appliances.

The average payback time right now is about 5 years, and costs are expected to continue falling as market take-up increases. Annual savings depend on available sunshine hours and the cost of locally produced electricity.

Germany has been doing it for years, since the German government streamlined the rules for power generation without needing approval from electricity utilities back in 2019. The technology is tried, tested and safe. Germany remains the largest market - about 1 in 10 households there use some form of plug-in solar panels. Now, more and more other jurisdictions are starting to cut the red tape to make it easy for consumers to install a plug-in solar system. Plug-in solar is now legal in most EU states (25 of 27), excepting Sweden (puzzling) and Hungary (not so puzzling).r

Utah was the first US state to pass legislation allowing it, and many others have followed suit.(or are in the process). Britain recently changed its rules to allow, and even encourage, it. Embarrassingly, here in Canada, the Canadian Standards Association is still "evaluating" the technology, and there are still "regulatory barriers" to overcome. 

With the crunch on gas prices caused by the US war in Iran, there has never been a better time for plug-in solar.

Don't skimp on your medications

A friend whose judgement I trust implicitly was talking recently about her niece who is a doctor in the UK. My friend also trusts her niece's judgement implicitly, so therefore so do I.

Anyway, the point is, this doctor had been kvetching about people who misuse everyday drugs (think, acetaminophen, ibuprofen) by not taking as much as they were allowed, according to the label. They may be worried about overdosing, or concerned about developing a tolerance, a dependence, an addiction, that kind of thing.

Well, my wife is that kind of cautious drug-user. So, given that she is now having to rely on extra-strength Tylenol (acetaminophen) to mask some pretty severe back pain, at least until her appointment with a pain management clinic comes through, I decided to check on the dosage rules and recommendations.

According to Harvard Health Publishing, which I'm also inclined to trust, one should "be cautious but not afraid" of Tylenol, and trust the dosage information on the label. Yes, people occasionally suffer liver damage and some even (very occasionally) die from overdoses, but you'd have to work very hard at it. Some small portion of the drug is converted in the body to a by-product that is toxic to the liver, but you'd have to take an awful lot to build up more than the body can handle. Also, unlike NSAIDS (ibuprofen/Advil and naproxen/Aleve), high doses of acetaminophen will not irritate the stomach and intestinal lining. As for President Trump and Robert F. Kennedy's conspiracy theories about Tylenol, treat them with the contempt they deserve.

The maximum recommended daily dose of acetaminophen is 4,000 milligrams (mg) from all sources, although 3,000 mg is recommended, to be on the safe side. 

So, if you are taking regular (325 mg) tablets, no more than 8 to 10 a day are recommended. The label suggests 1 or 2 tablets every 4 to 6 hours, which is about at the top end of the recommended daily dosage (although few people would continue taking them every 4 hours overnight, I think).

Extra-strength tablets are 500 mg, and no more than 6 a day are recommended. The label suggests 1 or 2 tablets every 6 to 8 hours. Some extra-strength tablets (e.g. for arthritis) are 650 mg, and no more than 4 a day are recommended. The label says take 1 every 8 hours (i.e. 3 a day).

So, as can be seen, the recommended dosages are quite conservative, and you'd have to be flouting them pretty cavalierly to run any risk at all of liver damage. So, don't skimp, take the recommended doses. You'll feel better and you're very, very unlikely to do any damage to your internal organs.

UCP's plan to gerrymander Alberta's electoral districts

Michelle Smith's United Conservative Party (UCP) continues unabashedly down the path blazed by Donald Trump's Republicans. This time they are pursuing what seems to be a textbook case of gerrymandering - manipulating electoral district boundaries for partisan advantage.

Electoral districts DO need to be changed from time to time as population numbers and densities change. In Alberta, as in other provinces, an independent committee exists to do just that. But when a majority of that committee announced that their analysis called for an increase to the number of seats in Calgary and Edmonton to account for increased populations in those cities, the UCP objected. 

You see, the cities of Calgary and Edmonton are strongholds of the opposition NDP party, and increasing seats there would be to the advantage of the NDP and the disadvantage of the UCP, whose core support is in more rural parts of Alberta.

So, the governing UCP has passed a plan for its own committee to create a new electoral district committee, which would be stacked with UCP members and would therefore be more amenable to UCP goals (i.e. continued power). The UCP's preferred "alternative" electoral map would have more than a dozen new merged urban and rural ridings, which would effectively dilute the power of the urban vote in Alberta elections. The motion would also establish an expedited oversight process, which could see electoral boundaries changed without any need for public hearings.

By expressly rejecting the advice of the existing redistricting committee, and setting up this alternative committee, Smith has opened herself up to allegations of gerrymandering and anti-democratic behaviour. Former Alberta Premier Rachel Notley warns that the new committee and their proposed "alternative" election map could ensure a UCP super-majority for decades to come. She is sufficiently removed from day-to-day politics to call it what is is: cheating.

Certainly, such a bare-faced and undemocratic ("Trumpian") move is unprecedented in Canadian politics. It was only a matter of time to discover whether it would be Smith or Ontario Premier Ford who first ventured down that murky road.

Are Americans just bored with Trump?

It's no secret that Americans have had enough of Trump. Democrats, obviously, never wanted or liked him, but it's now becoming clear that even many Republicans are over him. Opinion polls show him to be more unpopular than ever, below even Joe Biden's worst numbers. Even Tucker Carlson and his brother have come out publicly to apologize to the American public and to admit that they made a mistake in supporting and glorifying Trump.

So, what gives? It's taken them long enough, but even those Trump supporters who thought they really liked his folksy-but-confrontational approach are starting to realize that folksy-but-confrontational ALL THE TIME can be exhausting. People are fed up with the constant low-level anxiety, the whiplash from repeated flip-flops, the exhaustion from dealing with his constant outrage, hissy-fits, insults, exaggerations and lies. Essentially, people are just bored with Trump. If nothing else, they are bored with his many poor decisions. (I know I am.) Clowns can be amusing for a while, but they quickly pall.

And that's not even taking into account the realization that is starting to take hold in some disillusioned voters that all those higher prices, the disrupted and limping economy, and the possibly-irreparable hit to America's reputation and international standing, are actually all due to Trump's failed and misguided policies. Call it political caveat emptor. There is a limit to the number of economy-devastating vanity projects you can forgive a man.

Perhaps, the real surprise is that 30% or so of Americans are still willing to support him, although a good proportion of his base do not seem politically sophisticated enough to piece together what seems to so obvious to everyone else.

In my humble opinion (IMHO, if you're below a certain age), Donald Trump has contrived, single-handedly, to change the world, and none of the change is good. He - or at least his outsized influence - has damaged, perhaps irreparably, not just his own country but the entire world, including the environment, political debate, international relations, the economy, social mores, and more. He is a nasty, rapacious man who has made the whole world nastier and more rapacious, and he has opened the floodgates to almost everyone's baser instincts. Even where there are pockets of resistance, he has allowed, even encouraged, this baseness to spread in the background and in the opposition, like a blight across the globe.

Maybe, one day, I'll tell you what I really think about Donald Trump...

Is the Trump administration colluding in insider trading?

Throughout Donald Trump's second term, there have been many market-moving statements and announcement, more than in any other presidential term in living memory. Whether it be to do with the war in Iran, incursions into Venezuela, or just the never-ending series of announcements about tariffs early in his tenure, few (if any) presidents have made so many, and so consequential, public announcements that have had significant effects on the stock markets and resource prices. 

Often, these were just throwaway, late-night posts on Truth Social or other social media, but many of them were enough to send the already-jittery markets into a tailspin or a mysterious upsurge. Coincidence? I think not!

There is an increasing body of evidence that suggests that there was a suspicious surge in trading activity before many of these announcements, which has some commentators posing allegations of insider trading. There are many documented examples of traders betting millions of dollars on the exchanges just hours, or even minutes, before major policy announcements. The BBC details many such examples, and The Guardian has calculated that there may have been a least a billion dollars in suspiciously "perfectly-timed" trades, as well as online betting on platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi, during the Iran war alone. Notably, Donald Trump's own net worth has nearly doubled during his second term, which is only, lest we forget, just over a year old. Several members of Trump's immediate family have been doing very nicely thank you too.

Insider trading - stock trading based on non-public information about a company or sector - is highly illegal in America, as elsewhere. Some US senators have called for a probe into possibly insider trading during the height of the tariff nonsense. 

It is, however, notoriously difficult to prove such allegations, and the laws are very difficult to enforce. There is a strong chance that no-one will ever be prosecuted. Including, of course, Trump himself, and his family and close advisors.

UPDATE

Despite being in Trump's pocket, the Department of Justice (DoJ) has begun an official investigation into a series of suspiciously-timed trades in the oil market.just ahead of major announcements by President Trump.

My guess is that this is a show trial that will conveniently exonerate all concerned. But you never know, it might be real. Maybe this is the DoJ starting to extricate itself from under the Trumpian digit, and trying to distance itself from a president it sees as in the process of going down. Rats from a sinking ship?

Should (could?) Canada join the European Union?

I confess I hadn't really noticed it, but apparently  there is talk in some circles about what a good idea it would be for Canada to join the European Union (EU).

Wait, what? That's nuts! Well, yes, it is. 

Now, to be clear, this is not a full-blown movement. It's a few off-the-cuff comments by minor (or sometimes not-so-minor) members of the Finnish, German and French governments. The only not-so-minor Canadian who seems sold on the idea is Thomas Lucaszuk, a former Alberta cabinet minister, and he's pretty minor. But a recent Nanos poll suggests that nearly 58% of Canadians would be open to the idea.

Access to the world's second-largest economic bloc might be nice. But the implications of such a union would be stark. I know we are in the throes of a bad break-up with the USA, but to then look to throw in our lot with another behemoth would be the worst kind of rebound relationship. 

This is not just Canada joining the Eurovision Song Contest (also a bad idea) Becoming part of the EU, would mean de facto rule from Brussels - a common trade and tariffs policy (including the renegotiation of all current trade treaties), a common foreign policy, a common agricultural policy, a common fiscal policy, possibly a common currency. We would be subject to European laws and regulations, from the environment to finance to labour laws. It would amount to an almost complete loss of sovereignty, at a time when we're just realizing how valuable that is.

Luckily, it's not going to happen. Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union reserves membership to "any European state", which, last time I looked, we are most definitely not. And, anyway, we already have access to European trade through the Canada-European Union Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) - not perfect access by any means, but still pretty good. The experience of negotiating even that agreement was fraught enough - there is no way that all 27 member states would vote to allow Canada into their club.

I'm not sure that the suggestion was all that serious, just the kind of thing politicians throw around to make a point. But we should probably be grateful for that. Make nice with Europe by all means - it is a pretty civilized and sensible organization in an increasingly dysfunctional world - but don't even consider throwing caution to the wind and joining as a full member. Even the Eurovision Song Contest is controversial enough.

Japanese PM gushes over Deep Purple

This is great. It turns out that Japan's first ever female Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, is a hard rock devotee and a super-fan of British band Deep Purple.

Takaichi is herself a keen (and apparently frenetic) rock drummer, and used to play in a Deep Purple tribute band back in the day. So, when she met up with DP drummer Ian Paice, over 50 years after DP's seminal 1972 album Made In Japan, Ms. Takaichi's reaction was precious: "You are my god", she gushed, not words you often hear from a Prime Minister. She added, "These days, when I fight with my husband, I drum to Burn and cast a curse on him". Er, OK, perhaps a little too much information.

In the midst of trade wrangling with America, increasing tensions with China, and complaints about inflation and a sluggish economy, though, what a breath of fresh air.

The achievements and costs of the US war in Iran

Trump, Hegseth & Co have been claiming overwhelming victory since pretty much Day 1 of the US-Israeli war against Iran. I've lost count of the number of times both guys have claimed to have "obliterated" Iran's offensive and defensive capabilities, despite the fact that they continue, even now, bombing US allies and bases and even shooting down American aircraft.

Now Pakistan and China has come to the US's rescue by negotiating a two week ceasefire, giving Trump a much-needed potential way out after his wild, genocidal talk about "a whole civilization will die tonight". What little credibility Trump had is now completely shot, and his popularity at home has tanked even further.

So, this is perhaps not a bad juncture to stand back and assess exactly what Trump has achieved in Iran, and at what cost. Of course, the BBC has done my work for me.

America's goals in Iran have been a constantly moving target, depending on who is talking, when, and the particular spin they want to impose. But preventing Iran for developing nuclear weapons was always near the top of the list. Thing is, Iran has hardly any nuclear weapon development anyway, and what agreements and negotiations that were underway have all been derailed by Trump himself and his bull-in-a-china-shop approach. Art of the deal, my ass! 

It is thought that Iran probably still has enriched uranium salted away, even after five weeks of war and the unilateral strikes in nuclear facilities last June, and most diplomats believe that it is just not possible to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions by brute force alone. Iran remains just as defiant - perhaps even more so - about its independence and autonomy as ever.

Regime change was one of the early American goals, although that aspect has been back-pedalled more  recently. Remember "keep protesting, help is on the way"? By taking out Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, all they succeeded in doing is paving the way for an equally radical and much younger Mojtaba Khomeini. The regime, as such, remains very much in place.

Trump and Hegseth have also repeatedly claimed to have destroyed ("obliterated!") Iran's conventional arsenal - missiles, launchers, drones, arms factories and navies. However, leaked intelligence assessments suggest that only about half of Iran's pre-war arsenal has actually been destroyed. Certainly, Iran seems to have continued its bombing and drone attacks on US allies and bases in the Gulf, and it has shot down at last two supposedly-invincible American fighter jets in this last week alone.

Meanwhile, the war has been costing the USA more than a billion dollars a day, a price most Americans are probably blissfully unaware of. All those Tomahawk missiles don't come cheap. 13 US service members have died and hundreds more injured, which is peanuts compared to the huge Iranian casualties, but more than many Americans, including anti-interventionist MAGA voters, would be comfortable with for an unnecessary war of this kind.

And the damage to the country's reputation, and Trump's own brand? Incalculable.

I don't recommend tattoos

I don't have any tattoos. I don't actually like tattoos; I don't find them cool or attractive. But they are ubiquitous these days, as much among soccer moms and college students as among gang members and criminals. And it turns out they are not risk-free.

Setting aside the risk of infection inherent in any procedure that involves piecing the skin, which can be largely mitigated by using a reputable and licensed tattoo parlour, tattoo pigments can interact with the body's immune system in ways we are only beginning to understand.

Tattoo inks are not biologically inert - some inks can contain heavy metals like nickel, chromium, cobalt, even lead, as well as organic compounds like azo dyes and polycyclic hydrocarbons aromatics. They remain in the body for decades, interacting with the sun and breaking down into other chemicals, potentially triggering allergic reactions, immune sensitivities, genetic damage and cancers. They can also reduce the effectiveness of certain vaccines.

Tattoo ink does not stay just under the skin; it can migrate through the lymphatic system and accumulate in the lymph nodes, structures that help coordinate immune responses. There is evidence from animal studies (although, as yet, not human studies) suggesting that tattoo inks can cause carcinogenic by-products as they degrade over time or from exposure to ultraviolet light or laser removal. Cancers can take decades to develop in humans, so definitive research is difficult.

And, just for good measure, here's something else tattoos can affect: your vision. Tattoos, particularly among the very young, can lead to tattoo-related uveitus, where the immune system reacts to tattoo ink, causing eye pain, light sensitivity and some vision loss.

So, it's not absolutely certain that tattoos are dangerous (except for the immuno-compromised). But the odds are pretty strong. I won't be getting a tattoo any time soon, although not necessarily for that reason.

Sure, learn to breathe better, but it's probably not going to change the world

I'm not big on medical self-help books, that oh-so-popular sub-genre of a popular genre. If someone has to resort to writing a best-seller rather than going down the much less sexy (and lucrative) route of double-blind experiments and the scientific method, if someone tells anecdotal tale after anecdotal tale, however fascinating, then I start to worry, I start to get suspicious, especially where large royalty advances are involved.

And if Product X or life-habit Y really is a panacea and the cure for all known ills, then it would probably be much better-known and already integrated into mainstream medical practice, wouldn't it? If something looks like snake oil and smells like snake oil ... well, you know the rest.

But occasionally something comes along under the radar. This particular something was suggested to me by my daughter, who has a higher degree in biology and is a pretty smart cookie. She's also a fellow skeptic, and I have a lot of respect for her opinions.

Anyway, pre-amble aside, I am currently reading Breath by James Nestor. Mr. Nestor is not a medical practitioner; he's a journalist and someone who has a long history of health issues which he claims to have miraculously cured - red flags straight away for me. But his work does seem to be pretty thoroughly researched, and replete with endless references and sources. His prose is accessible and compelling. And he's not actually selling anything, maybe apart from media appearances, professional speaking engagements, and his hosted retreats and classes... (The book itself was a bestseller.) So actually he is selling something, I guess, but, on the strength of my daughter's recommendation, I have persisted with Breath.

Nestor does indeed present correct breathing as the elixir of life and the single solution to conditions as varied as hypertension, hypotension, asthma, pneumonia, emphysema, insomnia, sleep apnea, headaches, ADHD, scoliosis, obesity, yes even cancer. He, and many of the practitioners and other people he quotes, claim that it can add decades to life spans, and coax significantly improved performances out of athletes and opera singers alike.

He approaches his life-changing revelations in the tried-and-tested journalistic manner, with dramatic "personal story" anecdotes, and his own health issues, his academic study participations, and his apparent Paulian conversion, very much take centre stage. He draws some pretty extreme and far-reaching conclusions from his experiences and his research, though. And hey, who wouldn't like to believe that something as simple as breathing through your nose might be the solution to so many societal ills and life-changing illnesses?

So, am I convinced? Well, the jury is still out. I might try some of his exercises, a little self-experimentation of my own (although my own medical issues are not particularly bad or life-changing at this point). I do remain a bit skeptical, though, particularly about the sheer breadth of Nestor's claims.

Nestor makes some extraordinary claims, so this requires extraordinary evidence, in my view. He does provide some evidence, but some of it dates back to the 1960s or the 1930s or the 1900s (and some of it MUCH older than that). Some evidence is very limited in scope, and some is definitely in the realm of the anecdotal. When he starts to tie in religious prayer and chants, Shakespeare's iambic pentameter, and ocean swells, for example, he definitely veers towards the realm of book-padding, and my eyes start to glaze over. If you ask me, it detracts from his main arguments. 

Then, when Nestor gets into.some of the more extreme, controversial, even dangerous, breathing routines - respiratory acidosis, sympathetic nervous system overload, holotropic breathwork, hypocapnia, extreme apnea, etc - he lost me completely, and I started to skip sections. To be fair, he is up-front about the contentious and risky character of some of these methods. But, in that case, why include them?

Yes, it makes some common and intuitive sense to me that breathing through the nose and slowing down breathing would be beneficial, for a whole host of reasons. But let's not make this all-encompassing and world-changing.

Danielle Smith harbours many separatists in her partty

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith continues to publicly maintain the fiction that she is not pro-separatism, and that neither is her party. She claims to support "a sovereign Alberta within a united Canada", whatever that might mean.

The truth, though, is other. The Republican Party of Alberta, the official pro-independence political party, maintains a list of pro-independence MLAs on its website that includes no less than 19 MLAs from Ms. Smith's United Conservative Party (out of 48). 

Ms. Smith's own words and actions, while carefully avoiding outright boat-burning professions of independent aspirations, are far from those of a die-hard federalist. And her underlying beliefs are perhaps better exemplified by her omissions rather than her commissions.

For example, she has made no attempt to reign in the rabid pro-independence anti-Canadian talk of one of her more outspoken MLAs, Jason Stephan, who represents Red Deer-South and is currently Alberta's parliamentary secretary for constitutional affairs. 

In a piece for the strongly pro-independence newspaper The Western Standard, Stephan urged Albertans to "act and sign the petition", claiming that "Canada is in serious decline" and moving "towards a third world country". He asserts that Canada's standard of living is declining due to "stupid laws and policies emanating out of Ottawa", laws and policies that also "erode Alberta's freedoms in favour of a nanny state". He concludes "Ottawa wants Alberta broken too".

These do not sound like the opinions of a pro-Canada federalist, somehow. Some of the other UCP members have been shamed into distancing themselves from Stephan's comments. But Smith clearly does not see the need to distance herself from such incendiary talk from a member of her own caucus by taking concrete actions like removing him from caucus. "Sovereign Alberta within a united Canada" my arse.

Trump is just the "steward" of the White House

Brave US District Judge Richard Leon has ordered the Trump adminsitration to suspend construction of the $400 million "ballroom" Trump wants to replace the East Wing of the White House.

Unfortunately, it comes too late to prevent the demolition of the old East Wing, so what the practical effects of the judicial ruling will be remains unclear. But it re-states what everyone else already knew - that Trump cannot go around remodelling national treasures on a whim and without congressional approval. As Judge Leon put it: "The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!"

"Steward", eh. He's not going to like that.

Having already remodelled much of the interior of the White House along the lines of an extravagant 19th century brothel, Trump figured he could also do whatever he wants with the outside, and even to construct a lavish bomb shelter and "military complex" underneath it. Well, not so, says the law.

Mark Carney vows not to resort to proroguing Parliament

Mark Carney had been getting a bit of flak recently for some of his inconsistency. dithering and prevarication. But, like it or not (and I don't), these are times that call for a bit of circumspection and evasion where necessary.

Kudos where kudos is due, though, he has been very clear about refusing to prorogue Parliament if - and it is still an "if" - the Liberals win enough of the upcoming by-elections to reach a majority government.

Some unspecified Liberal sources have been positing the idea that, if they do achieve a majority, they should immediately prorogue Parliament so that any existing parliamentary committees get reset, and can then be re-established to reflect the new majority status, making it easier to control committee agendas and push legislation through.

This is a legitimate political strategy and governments of all stripes have resorted to it at some point. But it is always controversial and contentious, as it is seen as self-serving and almost a kind of legal cheating and loopholing. Most governments that have taken recourse to it is usually face some level of backlash for it. 

Carney is sensible enough to want to avoid backlashes. If he thinks he can get his policies through committees without proroguing Parliament - through the usual minority government tactics of collaboration with other parties - then he should certainly do that. I approve of his stance.

Alberta education bill a classic of DoubleThink

Alberta's right-wing government at it again with the DoubleThink and the gaslighting. They must be big fans of classic books and films!

The irony has probably never occurred to them, but by introducing a bill called "An Act to Remove Politics and Ideology from Classrooms and Amend the Education Act", the Alberta government is in fact introducing politics and ideology into classrooms, where none existed before.

Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides introduced the bill, with a straight face, saying,"This bill reflects that schools should teach students how to think, not what to think". The bill in fact bars teachers from making "political or social statements", displaying flags, and naming or renaming school buildings. It imposes school trustee codes of conduct, and various other restrictive measures. It is demonstrably NOT designed to make classrooms less political, merely to change the politics to something they approve of.

They might just as well have included, "War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength", for good measure.