Beware of Russians bearing what seem to be gifts

Now, I'm no military strategist, but it just seems extremely unlikely to me that Russia - in the person of hawkish Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, of all people - would make a public announcement that it is pulling its troops out of the strategic Ukrainian city of Kherson, unless it had some deep ulterior motive.

Are losing armies (particularly Russian ones answerable to the likes of a petulant dictator like Putin) really in the habit of making media announcements on national television of their most embarrassing manoeuvres? Ukrainians are understandably suspicious, however much Western media are playing it up.

Russian troops do indeed seem to be moving out, according to US observers. Maybe they are just re-establishing defensive lines south of the Dnipro River, and Russian artillery can still fire mortars from the other side of the river with relative impunity, and without having to engage fierce Ukrainian ground trooops. They can already be seen establishing fortification and trenches on the other side of the river. Either way, I can't imagine Vladimir Putin ordering his troops to retreat (and a turnaround of this magnitude most certainly came from the top). So, what's going on?

Well, there are anecdotal reports of some Russian troops (specifically Chechens) in plain clothes lingering in Kherson, so there are worries that Russia is setting up a trap of some sort. Ukrainian military planners and the long-suffering residents of Kherson alike are all expecting something of the sort - mines, booby-traps, roadside bombs, who knows? - and hopefully being very cautious as they move into spaces vacated by Russian troops. Suspicious? You bet. Ukrainian troops will certainly be very wary of pushing forward too fast as the Russians appear to retreat.

Why are so many kids still unvaccinated?

I'm at a loss to explain the poor uptake of COVID vaccine among young children.

When vaccines first became available, in what now feels like another life, Canada was slow to start due to supply problems. But it very quickly made up for lost time and soon became one of the most highly-vaccinated populations in the world. At least its adult population.

When vaccinations became available for younger people under the age of 18, the take-up was much lower and slower, and vaccinations among under-5s were even fewer when a vaccine became available for them. Vaccinations for under-5-year olds is currently languishing at around 6%, even fewer have second doses and boosters. Among those under 2-years old, the rate is even lower, as low as just 1%.

Now, obviously, it's not the kids who are making the decision not be vaccinated. It is the parents of those kids, the same adults who chose to get the vaccine for themselves. So, what is the logic? Why would they get the vaccine for themselves but deny it to their kids, the same kids who are mingling unprotected at schools and kindergartens and preschools with other unvaccinated kids (and contracting COVID in droves in the process, from anecdotal accounts, although testing is almost non-existent now and there are few to no reliable statistics any more)? 

The vaccines are proven efficacious for kids, and have little to no side-effects. Those same kids have many other vaccines (and indeed are required to in order to attend school). So, what's the deal?

How did the US elections come to this?

It's the night before the US Mid-Term Elections, and all through the land, and beyond, all the press coverage has set up a really divisive and downright nasty election.

To a heretofore unprecedented extent, this election is a clash of absolutely irreconcilable opposites. On one side is a set of candidates who have certain policy beliefs, but still believe in the election process and the democratic system. On the other side, over half of the candidates still believe that Donald Trump won the last election in 2020, despite all the evidence and innumerable court cases to the contrary. Furthermore, many of them are openly saying that, if they lose tomorrow night, they will not accept the results, and will still insist that they have really won and that the system is corrupt and the system is fixed (although not if they win). Some candidates for state governor and secretary of state from that party say that they will not necessarily carry out the will of the electorate if they don't like the looks of it. Further furthermore, that side even has armed vigilantes patrolling polling stations, supposedly looking to spot irregularities and voter fraud, but in reality as an attempt to intimidate and deter voters from the other side.

Now, you might think that one of those sides would be much more mainstream and popular, that the other side would be way too extreme and immoderate for most people. But it turns out that the two sides are neck and neck, and that the anti-democratic side is even, if anything, expected to prevail.

It all seems highly improbable to an outside observer. It's hard to know how things in America have come to this pass. Well, the simple answer is Donald Trump, but that doesn't really explain anything. That half of the voting population of the United States - many millions of people - would support candidates who openly question the traditional proven democratic process when it suits them just boggles the mind. It's a sad and disturbing prospect.

Israel is in for an ugly few years

There is an excellent article in this weekend's Globe and Mail by Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. It gives a good, and I think reasonably objective (insofar as that is even possible in the fractured politics of modern Israel) glimpse into the state of Israel in the wake of Benjamin Yetanyahu's recent re-election.

In the fifth general election in 4 years, Israel was once again voting on the leadership of Netanyahu, despite the ongoing court cases against him. This time, after some pretty nasty and at times violent campaigning, he succeeded, albeit with the support of some pretty unsavoury ultra-right wing extremist parties like the Religious Zionism party, which openly seeks to erode democratic institutions and foment discord between Jews and Arabs. With the help of these ultra-nationalist and ultra-Orthodox parties, Netanyahu hopes to pass a law prohibiting the prosecution of a sitting Prime Minister, his best chance at avoiding criminal prosecution on charges of corruption.

In this election, Yetanyahu managed to beat back the outgoing coalition of the Yesh Atid party and the National Unity party, parties that Netayahu tried to portray as extreme left-wing parties, although the truth is that they are closer to centre and centre-right respectively (Israel's politics is notoriously right-wing in general, and almost all parties are deeply nationalistic). That coalition also included the tiny Islamist Ra'am party, the first time in Israel's history that an Arab party has been represented in government. So, the tantalizing glimpse of what Israel might look like as a more democratic and inclusive state has been cruelly cut short.

Under Netanyahu and his extreme-right buddies, then, Israel returns to a state where Arabs and Jews are mortal enemies, Israeli settlements spread ever further into the West Bank, and the Palestinian conflict spreads once more into Israel's streets. However, Yetanyahu, for all his failings, is no fool, and he will probably try to reign in his more extremist allies, mindful of his international reputation (such as it is). 

But it's probably going to be an ugly few years, certainly for Palestine, and also for anyone looking in from the outside.

What is behind the soaring Indigenous incarceration rates?

Correctional Service Canada (CSC) - after many years of calls from many different sources including the National inquiry into Missing and Murdered Women and Girls, various parliamentary committees on the status of women and public safety, and CSC's own Correctional Investigator, Ivan Zinger, on more than one occasion - is to fill a new position called "Deputy Commissioner, Indigenous Corrections", which is to address the soaring rates of Indigenous incarceration in Canada, particularly among women.

I must confess, I am at a loss to explain the prevalence of Indigenous incarcerations. It's something of an epidemic, and it doesn't show any signs of getting any better. 

The conventional wisdom is that anti-Indigenous racism is the main cause. But this takes away all agency from the Indigenous people themselves. Brown and Asian people in Canada suffer from institutionalized racism too, and often live in relative poverty, but their incarceration rates are much LOWER than the average. 

Which suggests to me that internal cultural norms may be a much more important factor than imposed racism. That's probably a very contentious assertion, I understand. 

It's no secret that violence is rife in Indigenous communities, especially domestic partner violence, as is alcoholism and drug abuse, which are often contributing factors. This is usually blamed on colonialization and forced assimilation and the ongoing fallout from the residential school system. These are almost certainly factors, but how individuals deal with this legacy seems to vary immensely. Some see it as a challenge to be overcome, and many Indigenous people seemed to be able to live rich, fulfilling, even exemplary, lives. Others fall into the trap of victimhood, and check out completely from any positive trajectory of life. I can see how this would happen, and can well imagine being there myself in different circumstances.

But it's hard to know to what extent the culture (both ancient and more modern) of Indigenous communities is, by its very nature, a violent one, at least compared to, say, an Indian or Philippino community. North American Indigenous cultures like to portray themselves as peace-loving, matriarchal custodians of the earth. And there may indeed be an element of that in Indigenous culture, but there is also a historical element of cruel, macho and violent warmongering, and who knows how these different traditions play out in day-to-day life.

I guess I am just naturally suspicious of a narrative that tries to explain everything in a pat, single-variable manner. Surely, not all of the disproportionate incarceration rates of Indigenous people can be explained by racism, institutional or otherwise. Maybe the daily lives of Indigenous people, particularly in the more remote, under-serviced regions where they traditionally live, predispose them to a more violent and chaotic lifestyle.

I say good luck to the soon-to-be-announced "Deputy Commissioner, Indigenous Correction". Maybe he or she will be able to weed out some root causes of the current malaise. How such causes may be addressed, though, may be far outside of the job description.

What is synchronous and asynchronous learning?

During the current education workers' strike by CUPE in Ontario (after the Conservative government ill-advisedly legislated them back to work, doubling down on the sledgehammer by invoking the "notwithstanding clause" to avoid any legal remedies), you may have seen the news that some school boards are mandating synchronous online lessons, while others are setting up asynchronous online lessons. And you may have wondered what the hell "synchronous" and "asynchronous" actually mean in this context.

In general terms, "synchronous" just means "at the same time" (and "asynchronous", therefore, means "not at the same time"). In education terms, synchronous learning refers to instructors and students gathering together at the same time, whether in-person or online, and interacting in real time. This is, then, the normal way kids are taught (whether in-person or online). Asynchronous learning, on the other hand, refers to students accessing materials on their own, proceeding at their own pace, and only interacting with instructors or other students over a longer time frame.

Makes perfect sense when explained, but it would have been nice to have seen an explanation in some of these news reports.

Why TikTok is not your friend

Anyone who has read any of these posts will know that I don't do TikTok (or Facebook or Twitter, and rarely YouTube). Indeed, I have a very healthy skepticism about any of these social media platforms, sometimes based on known facts, and sometimes based on a gut feeling that they are either evil or at least a potential gateway to evil.

TikTok is the newest of these platforms, and ridiculously popular nowadays, particularly among the influential youth and Gen Zs of the world. With over a billion users, TikTok is the fastest-growing audience of any social media platform, and was accessed more times than even Google last year. It's not all about viral dance routines and cute cat videos, though. Increasingly, people are getting their news through TikTok; people search for new apartments on TikTok (I kid you not). For a certain subset of people, it is the "everything app", and ubiquitous and pervasive in their lives.

A segment on CBC's The Current (starting at 22:48 minutes into the audio, until about minute 45) has gone a long way towards validating my skepticism. A reporter for Forbes magazine has found evidence that TikTok, and its Chinese parent company ByteDance, is being used to monitor the location of certain US citizens (the reporter was not at liberty to reveal exactly who or why), not using GPS, but using the user's IP address, which is a slightly less accurate method of determining location. Like many apps, this is just one of the many elements of data that users are sharing with the owners of the app, largely unbeknown to most users, and the whole picture can be detailed enough to provide ByteDance (and thereby the Chinese government) with some pretty sensitive information ("data espionage").

This all comes as US security agencies are already looking into whether TikTok represents a security threat to the USA. TikTok is not as transparent as most other major social media platforms in that it does not make public which videos or content is trending countrywide or worldwide, and which are the most popular and most-viewed videos. There is therefore some concern that ByteDance, through TikTok, may be spreading misinformation. We really don't know what the world is watching on TikTok.

Global Witness has carried out some studies to assess TikTok's ability to weed out political misinformation, by deliberately uploading political falsehoods and misleading content and checking to what extent TikTok's algorithms was able to spot and delete them. Turns out the answer is hardly at all. 90% of the misleading advertising was accepted by TikTok, as compared to Facebook (which did much better) and YouTube (which was able to spot almost all of the spurious content). None of their process is publicly available in an "ad library" like Facebook and Google publishes.

Now, admittedly, TikTok is a much younger platform than Facebook or YouTube. But it is now so ubiquitous that it really needs to up its privacy game. And there is still a good chance that the US will actually ban TikTok - the Federal Communications Commission has already found that TikTok represents a concrete potential security threat to the USA, and negotiations are ongoing between TikTok and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) as to whether it can even continue in business in the US.

Doug Ford may not pay any political price for his use of the notwithstanding clause

Ontario Premier Doug Ford and his Education Minister Stephen Lecce have passed legislation to avoid having to go through that tiresome collective bargaining process with the education workers union CUPE. If that were not sledgehammer enough, they are coupling it with an invocation of Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the notorious "notwithstanding clause".

Having offered a paltry 2.5% pay increase to the 55,000 CUPE workers (1.5% for those earning more than $43,000 a year), at a time when inflation is running at around 7%, the Ontario government decided to go straight to the nuclear option and table legislation to "terminate any ongoing strike" by CUPE, supposedly in the interests of hard-pressed kids and parents. So desperate were they to push through this piece of legislation that they arranged a rare 5am parliamentary session to do it. The use of the notwithstanding clause is designed to ensure that the union has no legal recourse, even if the legislation can be shown to be an illegal curtailment of labour rights under the Charter. So, essentially, Ford is using the notwithstanding bludgeon because he knows that what he's doing is wrong and illegal.

Think what you may about the notwithstanding clause - and I know what I think of it! - it was not designed to be used like this. Quebec Premier François Legault has used it several times, and now Doug Ford is getting the hang of it. This is the second time Ford has used it in the last two years (and he threatened, but ultimately did not need, a third). The more often it is used, the less strong the taboo against its use becomes. It's not supposed to be a get out-of-jail-free card, to be used whenever it is considered expedient, and Mr. Ford is receiving some significant blowback over it (and quite rightly so!)

Prime Minister Trudeau just called it "wrong, in a rather lame-sounding but still unequivocal condemnation, and federal Justice Minister David Lametti commented, "Using the notwithstanding clause and using it preemptively is exceedingly problematic ... It de facto means that people's rights are being infringed and it's being justified". None of this is going to worry Doug Ford too much. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association issued a statement saying that, "the flagrant disregard of individuals rights is wrong, and it is dangerous to our constitutional democracy". Ho hum...

The Ontario Federation of labour called it a "full frontal attack on basic labour freedoms", but presumably he won't lose any sleep over that either. One of Canada's largest construction unions, the Labourers' International Union of North America (LiUNA) - one of the unions that, surprisingly, threw its support behind Ford at the last election - has warned that the use of the notwithstanding clause in this case represents "a dangerous precedent that aims to erode respect for collective bargaining rights and unionized labour in Ontario", and is calling on Ford to revoke the unprecedented back-to-work legislation. So, some of that union support that Ford managed, inexplicably, to acquire may be on its way out.

Historically, though, there has been little or no political consequence for provincial premiers' use of the notwithstanding clause, despite the seriousness of the implications of its use. Neither did the Ontario electorate punish Ford for his 2021 use of the notwithstanding clause - he was re-elected in 2022 with an even larger majority. It seems like it can be invoked with impunity, depressing though that thought is.

Multiple legal authorities say that Ford's use of the notwithstanding clause just to avoid an unpleasant labour negotiation and strike is unprecedented, controversial and politically fraught. I have seen few or no comments in favour of the move, even among Conservatives. But it seems that Ford & Co just don't really care any more. Maybe they can't see themselves being re-elected a third time anyway, so there is no real political risk (the notwithstanding clause exempts the decision from Charter scrutiny for four years, i.e. after the next election).

CUPE maintains that it will go ahead with the one-day strike planned for this Friday, regardless of the fact that it is now an illegal, not a legal, strike, and the union will just pay the $4,000 a day fines that it will trigger (and as much as $500,000 for the union itself, which the Ford government vows to enforce). Informal talks are apparently still going on between CUPE and the government, but you can imagine there is a lot of bad blood between the two sides after a move like that.