Is the US back in the business of regime change?

As the Trump administration continues to blow up fishing vessels in the Caribbean (at least ten so far), vessels that it maintains, without much evidence, are Venezuelan drug traffickers bound for America, and as the US continues to build up planes, warships, aircraft carriers and troops off the Venezuelan coast, the likelihood increases that President Trump intends to launch a full-scake invasion of the South American country, with intent to remove President Nicolás Maduro, who Trump bramds as a narco-trafficker, drug kingpin and terrorist.

The 60 Minutes video does a good job of encapsualting the basket-case that is today's Venezuela. and the enormities carried out by Maduro's security forces against its people. Hunger, power blackouts and a scarcity of medicines are now a way of life there. Triple-digit inflation and years of government mismanagement has meant  that over 70% of the population now lives in poverty, in what was once one of the wealthiest countries in the world. A fifth of the country's population has fled the scary police state that Venezuela has become over the last decade or two.

Elections last year were marred by violence and, although an estimated 70% voted for opposition leader María Corina Machado.(recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize), Maduro clung to power anyway, setting off a brutal crackdown on political opposition, involving arrests, torture, even murder. Machado is now in hiding, although there are reports that she is planning some kind of "peaceful transition" with US help, although it is hard to envisage a scenario that doesn't involve American boots on the ground.

As reports are leaked of American forces massing offshore, the Venezuela people clearly feel like something big is about to happen. Government troops are actively mobilizing in large numbers, and they are urging civilians to prepare for combat. A $50 million reward for Maduro's arrest shows how serious the US is. 

Despite Maduro's combative recent public appearances and his stridently anti-American rhetoric, Trump maintains that there have been private negotiations with Maduro, who has offered the US a stake in Venezuela's huge oil reserves in return for security guarantees. He is also happily accepting Venezuelan deportees from the USA.

Meanwhle, American F35s continue to pick off Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean, a tactic that many argue amounts of extra-juducial killings (court cases are pending in the US). The American admiral in charge of Caribbean operations mysteriously quit his job two years ahead of schedule, almost certainly as a result of this (and possibly future US plans).

I lived in Venezuala about 30 years, and it was a mess then. It's much more of a mess now. But is the US really going back into the business of regime change - think Iran, Cuba, Vietnam, Guatemala, Nicaragua - after all these years?

How come tariffs are affecting the price of coffee in Canada?

Coffee prices are on the rise, and suppliers are blaming ... US tariffs.

Hold on, you say, the USA doesn't produce any coffee (well, a little bit in Hawai'i and Puerto Rico). Aren't we just blaming tariffs for everything, just like we used to blame the pandemic for everything?

Well, yes and no.

Coffee prices have been rising for some months, even years, largely due to heat, drought, storms and other poor weather conditions in big producing countries like Brazil, Colombia, Vietnam, etc, due to climate change and La Niña conditions. As a result, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that world coffee prices rose nearly 40% in 2024.

But, while most of Canada's unroasted coffee imports come from Brazil, Colombia and Honduras, most of its roasted coffee does in fact come from the USA, mainly because American companies are much more geared up and dominate the supply chain for the whole of North America.

The US, as mentioned, imports 99% of it's coffee (some of which it then re-exports to Canada, Mexico, etc), and it has imposed tariffs on most of its major coffee suppliers: Brazil (50% tariffs), Colombia (10% tariffs, liable to increase), Vietnam (20% tariffs), etc. So, American coffee prices are suddenly more expensive, which manifests as higher prices for countries, like Canada, that imports from the US. 

Big suppliers like Brazil that are strongly affected by US tariffs are also further affecting the supply pricing structure as they hold onto their coffee beans in the hope of future improvements in the tarrif landscape, thereby tightening available supply and worsening prices still further.

It gets even worse: Canada imposed a 25% counter-tariff in US imports (including coffee) back in March of this year, so the already inflated import prices are even higher as a result.

Although a 3c increase on a cup of Tim Hortons is not a big deal, despite the outcry, a bag of coffee in the supermarket has seen a much larger price increase (28% according to August figures from Statistics Canada). Either way, even these combined price increases are not going to mean that coffee consumption will actually go down in any significant way; after all, we are all pretty much addicted by this point. We'll just kvetch more about the cost.

Is Mamdani the saviour of the American left, or its bane?

New York City is going through what might be called "interesting times". And I don't mean the Yankees reeling from a defeat by the Toronto Blue Jays en route to the World Series.

On November 4th, the city votes for a new Mayor to replace the scandal-plagued Eric Adams, and the favourite is not (equally scandal-plagued) ex-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (standing as an Independent after he lost the Democratic nomination), nor the uninspiring and ageing Republican Curtis Sliwa, but the youthful socialist firebrand Zohran Mamdani.

With a double-digit lead in the polls, just over a week ahead of the vote (advance voting has already begun), upstart Mamdani has a clear run to the position of Mayor of America's largest and most important city. As the 34-year old son of Ugandan-Indian immigrants, a Muslim, and a declared democratic socialist, he is perhaps an unlikely candidate for such an important and influential job. But he is a three-term member of the New York state assembly, and no political neophyte. He is smart, charismatic and he positively oozes authenticity.

Mamdani has battled his way to this position on a platform of taxing the wealthy (including a special 5.9% income tax on millionaires, and a sharp increase in corporate taxes), freezing rents, and offering free buses and childcare, an unabashedly socialist stance that seems to have struck a chord with New Yorkers, particularly the younger generation. He has made no secret of his pro-Palestine, anti-Israel views in a city where Jewish money has always spoken very loudly.

He is the epitome of the kind of progressive politician Donald Trump hates and, if elected, he can expect a huge battle with Trump, who has no qualms about interfering in municipal and state politics. Indeed, Trump has already loosed the opening salvos in anticipation of the election, calling Mamdani a "100% Communist lunatic", and has already threatened to cut federal funding to the city should Mamdani be elected. Nothing daunted, Mamdani has lambasted Trump and his ICE agents, saying "His authoritarian administration is waging a scorched-earth campaign of retribution against any who dared opposed him". You can expect the tone of the debate to deteriorate from here.

Mamdani has even set the cat among the pigeons within the Democratic party itself. Neither Chuck Schumer nor Hakeem Jeffries (Democrat leaders of the Senate and the House of Representatives respectively), representing the old-school centrist Democratic tradition, have come out to endorse Mr. Mamdani, although New York state Governor Kathy Hochul (herself a centrist, although less old-school) has, and there are signs that rank-and-file Democrats may be moving more towards Mamdani's more radical opinions, and away from the perceived cautiousness of Schumer and Jeffries.

It should be mentioned, though, that Mr. Mamdani is starting to temper some of his more exteme views, as the promise of such a high-profile position beckons. For example, he has apologized for calling the New York Police Department "racist, anti-queer, and a major threat to public safety", and supporting calls for its defunding. He has also said that he would actively discourage pro-Palestinian activists from using the contentious phrase "globalize the intifada", which he once espoused himself.

However, many federal Democrats still worry that a socialist experiment in New York led by Mr. Mamdani might reflect badly on the Democratic Party when it comes to mid-term elections next year. Others, though, wonder whether Mamdani is in fact the face of the future, and maybe a way out of Trumpism. Interesting times indeed.

Ontario anti-tariff ad is not fake, but was still ill-advised

Donald Trump has had another temper tantrum and called an abrupt halt to the ongoing trade negotiations between Canada the US.

The reason this time? A prime-time advertisement on American television paid for by the province of Ontario, using parts of a 1987 national address by then President Reagan, critical o9f tariffs and in favour of free trade. Trump freaked out when he saw the ad, calling it "FAKE" and "egregious", later adding that Reagan "LOVED TARIFFS FOR OUR COUNTRY AND ITS NATIONAL SECURITY".

Well, I'm not sure Trump is certain about the meaning of egregious, but the video is certainly not fake, and Reagan certainly did not love tariffs, only using them very sparingly in cases of absolute necessity (e.g. against Japan, which was the occasion for the address to the nation sampled in the Ontario ad). 

"Sometimes, for a short while, it works, but only for a short time", Reagan is quoted as saying in his 1987 speech. "Over the long run, such trade barriers hurt every American, worker and consumer." He continues, "High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries, and the triggering of fierce trade wars. Then the worst happens: markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs." Etc, etc. Ford's intention was to have President Reagan, still a revered icon for most American conservatives, show how Trump's policies will not work for them in the long run.

The Reagan video clips are quite real. His words are not altered in any way. The only thing that has been changed from the original address is the order in which Reagan's various statements occurred. I'm not sure why this was done - presumably the producers of the advertisement felt the rearranged clips had more dramatic effect - or why the BBC felt it important to explain this in great detail in their investigation and analysis of the ad.

And, of course, some of the address has also been cut out completely, in order to make a 5-minute speech fit a 1-minute ad. But none of the deleted parts negate in any way the import and sense of Reagan's comments. In fact, as the BBC analysis shows, most of what was left out would have made the anti-tariff point even more strongly. So, the claims of the Ronald Reagan Foundation that the ad is "misleading", in some unexplained way, seems incorrect too.

All that being said, I still wish that the ad had not been broadcast, and that Ontario Premier Doud Ford would stop sticking his oar into international politics. He is just making the job of the real trade negotiators harder than it need be. Even if the intention was laudable, Ford's timing was abysmal, the ads (and Trump's predictable reaction) aired just as real progress wasnbeing made on sectoral tariffs like steel, aluminium, lumber, autos. That hard-earned progress is now gone, and may never be recovered.

Ford is trying to live upto the "Captain Canada" persona some admirers have labelled him with, but, in reality, he is just a provincial premier with very limited power and influence. The last time he tried to unilaterally face off with Trump, he ended up with egg on his face as Trump promptly doubled Canadian tariffs, and Ford had to ignominiously walk back his own feeble attempt. He's not good at this stuff, and he really needs to stay in his own lane. Mr. Sensitivity he is not.

UPDATE

Ford has grudgingly agreed to take the ads down, presumably after Mark Carney and his negotiating team had some strong words with him.

However, thanks to the "Steisand Effect" (in which trying to shut something down results in many more people seeing it), the ad has been viewed over a billion times, making it, in Doug Ford's estimation, "the most successful ad in the history of North America, not just here". He added, " We generated a conversation that just wasn't happening in the US", which may or may not be true. And how can it be the most successful ad if it has achieved the exact opposite of what it intended (increased tariffs, not zero tariffs)?

UPDATE UPDATE

Because Ford didn't take the ads down quickly enough (or so Trump says), Trump has not only stopped all trade negotiations with Canada, but has slapped an extra 10% tarriff on everything exported to Canada "because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act". This comes long after Trump's initial reaction that he could have made the ad himself were he Ontario, until,, that is, he realized he could use it to his advantage.

So, any pretence of American tariffs being imposed for economic or national security reasons has now gone completely. Trump is now openly imposing US tariffs for random personal reasons. But, in the absence of a court ruling specifically disallowing them, the tariffs stand, illegal or not.

Once again, Trump called the Ontario ad "fraudulent", "crooked" and "possibly AI", and reiterated his belief that "Ronald Reagan LOVED tariffs". None of that is true, as I'm sure Trump himself really knows. But what IS true is that Doug "Bull in a China Shop" Ford should keep his butt out of sensitive international negotiations. He is not up to the task. *Sigh*

Of course, there are those who believe that Ford's antagonistic ad was not actually to blame for Trump's latest temper tantrum, but that Trump just used it as an excuse, a pretext, for an increased tariff threat against Canada, which he admits he finds hard to deal with. If it wasn't the ad, then, it would have been something else. Maybe this is just Trump's bizarre idea of "the art of the deal" - calling off negotiations from time to time, just to keep negotating partners off-balance. Well, that may or may not be true, but the point stands: Ford should not be handing Trump pretexts.

Blue Jays fans get creative over tickets

In case you didn't hear, the Toronto Blue Jays are in the Major League Baseball's World Series for the first time since 1993, first game tonight at the Rogers Centre against the Los Angeles Dodgers. It's big deal here - and even throughout the rest of Canada - and thousands of closet Jays fans (including me) have suddenly come out.

Thing is, it's such a big deal that ticket prices for home games have gone through the (retractible) roof. Initial ticket offerings sold out within hours. There have been the usual stories of touts and scammers buying up the much sought-after tickets online and immediately re-selling them at three or four times the price. There have been stories of real fans trying to buy tickets and being booted out at the payment stage under suspicion of being an automated bot (because, yes, that's a thing too, these days).

Resale tickets are going for up to $10,000, even $15,000 a piece. One lower bowl seat was being offered at $32,609. The very cheapest seats are currently selling for about $1,300 on StubHub. Toronto Mayor - oops, sorry, Ontario premier Doug Ford - has been musing about bringing in laws to limit the resale price of tickets by scalpers and gougers for events like these, but that won't help people this week, and once the event is over Ford will probably conveniently forget about all his righteous outrage (remember, he very scrapped a very similar law proposed by the Liberals when he first took office in 2019).

But some people are getting creative about getting hold of the golden tickets.

Flights to LA from Toronto are currently around $400, and you can probably find accommodation there for less than the $280 average hotel price. Given that the cheapest seats to the LA games are much cheaper (around $860), Dodgers fans being much more used to World Series appearances, you could see a game in California for around the same price you can in Toronto, which is kind of ridiculous. Of course, you also run the risk of being finger-printed, arrested, deported, and God knows that else...

Rooms in the Toronto Marriott City Centre Hotel with rooms overlooking the field of play are expensive, at around $4,000 a night (and up), but they can accommodate up to 5 people, so individuals could only pay $800 (and up) each. I doubt those are still available though.

Some people have started up GoFundMe campaigns to accumulate the cash needed for a ticket from generous souls who may or may not know them, one or two dollars at a time, and some of those have well surpassed their goals.

Then, there is something called "district drops", good tickets offered at preferential prices to those subscribing to a Blue Jays promotional text subscription scheme.

And finally, you could just trust to luck and hope for last minute price drops - and I mean VERY last minute - through Ticketmaster, as they look to unload unsold tickets. But given everything else that is going on, and the general baseball hysteria in the city, I really wouldn't rely on that.

I only hope all these people are not disappointed.

Dr. Oz explains MAGA Math

After Donald Trump promised to reduce American drug prices "by 1,400, 1,500%", most people were left scratching their heads. Wouldn't that make them free? Or rather, wouldn't drug companies be paying customers significant amounts to take their drugs? Can you really reduce prices by more than 100% of the price?

He left it to ex-talk show host and now boss of America's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr. Mehmet Oz, to explain Trunp's higher math to us mere mortals.

"The President does the calculation by saying, 'OK, if a drug was $100 and you reduce it by $50, it's 100% cheaper because you're taking $50 off and left with only $50 ... they're equal, so it's 100%' ". Clear?

When asked about how a 1,500% reduction would work, Oz explained, "Well, if you take a drug that is $200 or $240 like we did last week and reduce it to $10, those are the numbers you're talking about". Okaaaay...

Still shaking my head.

Dead Internet Theory sounds entirely plausible

While I am on the subject of inexplicable mass cultural movements, here's another one that seems to have passed me by until now. Dead Internet Theory has been around since the late 2010s, but gained serious traction in 2021. Yes, it's a conspiracy theory, but one with a plausible ring to it, like the idea that we are all living in a Matrix-like computer simulation.

The idea is that, if it sometimes seems like the internet, and the social media part of it in particular, is all so predictable and soulless that it may as well be generated by bots and AI, well, that's because it is. Believers in the theory believe that the vast majority of internet traffic, posts and users are actually bots and AI-generated content, and that humans no longer shape the direction of the inernet.

The theory was propelled into the mainstream by an article by Kaitlyn Tiffany in The Atlantic in 2021, in which she talked about an internet that felt "empty and devoid of people" and "entirely sterile", largely because aggressive "algorithmic curation" and "content farms", particularly on sites like Twitter and Facebook, made it feel like the whole internet was comprised of the same threads and memes. And that was BEFORE ChatGPT started...

Backing this up is the 2024 Imperva Threat Research report, which concluded that almost 50% of traffic on the internet now comes from automated bots, most of them so-called "bad bots", involved with transaction fraud, data scraping and harvesting. Of course, that could be fake news too; it's increasingly hard to tell.

So, is the dull commercial slop that seems to make up much of the internet today actually mainly machine-generated? Are most of the people you interact with online day to day actually not humans at all? Is the internet really dead? How would we ever know? Given the mad popularity of viral memes like Shrimp Jesus, Raptor Jesus and Foul Bachelor Frog, does it even matter any more?

"6-7" is just so, well, 6-7

I don't believe I've ever actually heard it myself, but apparently "6-7" is the meaningless phrase du jour. In fact, it was just voted Word of the Year for 2025 by Dictionary.com.

For some time now, kids have been shouting out "6-7" whenever it seems appropriate (e.g. page 67 in a book, a basketball player who is 6'7", 6 minutes to 7 o'clock) or, increasingly, for no reason whatsoever. Because that's kind of the point of it: it has no point.

According to legend, it started from a tune by Philadelphia rapper Skrilla called "Doot Doot (6 7)", which may or may not be a reference to the police code 10-67, which is used to report a death. Rather than "Doot doot" becoming a catchphrase, which it might well have done, the "6 7" part caught the imaginations of a bunch of young people, and gradually became amplified through TikTok and other social media, as these things do (c.f. "skibidi", "rizz", etc, etc)

Teachers report hearing it hundreds of times each day, often accompanied by a specific hand gesture. It just seems to have tickled the funny bone of young people, and established itself as a kind of shorthand for "cool" and "in", despite, or maybe because of, its complete lack of logic or meaning. It is an example of what linguists call "semantic bleaching", where a word or phrase become completely divorced from its original meaning.

Some teachers have even started using (or deliberately misusing) it themselves, in the full knowledge that it is not supposed to be used by "grown-ups", as a way of defusing and de-legitimizing it, hoping it will just go away as a result.

The outcome of that particular ploy remains inconclusive, but there are rumours that the next craze phrase may be "4-1", again for absolutely no reason.