If even Daivd Suzuki is sounding defeatist...

I'm not sure I'vebever heard the usually ebulliant and ever-young David Suzuki being quite so pessimistic about climate change.

Canada's best-known environmentalist is usually so positive and upbeat that I wonder how he keeps it up in the face of all the challenges and set-backs facing the environmental movement. In a recent interview, though, he admits that he has basically given up on expecting politicians, governments and large-scale political entities to see the light and to push for legislative change to curb the worst effects of climate change.

It's not that he has compketely given up on fighting against global warming. It's just that he has realized that the political system in which we operate is too much geared towards short term solutions, optics, and winning the next election to expect politicians to fight for any meaningful changes vis-à-vis the climate.

He believes that we have already overshot on seven of the nine global "tipping points" or "planetary boundaries" identified by influential environmentalist Johan Rockström, and there is now no way back. All that remains, he says, is to try to minimize the damage and to help each other deal with the fallout at a small-scale community level.

As Suzuki says, "The science says we're done for ... let's fight like mad to be as resilient as we can in the face of what's coming". Self-sufficiency and self-reliance will be key in the future world we are inheriting, he warns. 

It all sounds pretty gloony and apocalyptic. But he's probably not wrong.

Masked ICE agents part of the long slide into totalitarian terror

More and more report and videos are emerging of some of the nefarious tactics being employed by Trump's ICE warriors. Women and children separated from husbands and fathers, disguised and unmarked officers punching victims repeatedly in the head. They may be detained unlawfully in unsanitary conditions for many hours, even days. There seem to be few, if any, checks on their behaviour.

These are scenes straight out of dystopian fuction, but this is real. And this is not theocratic Iran, or 1980s El Salvador, or Chile under Pinochet; this is today's America under Donald Trump.

So, if ICE is a legitimate government department in a democratic country, why are its agents wearing face-obscuring masks and dark glasses and using unmarked vehicles? The official line is that they are protecting themselves from doxing (maliciously publishing private information about individuals on the internet) and increasing threats to their safety. 

But these are not clandestine operations agsainst organized drug rings or violent criminal gangs. The subjects being targeted by ICE are usually private individuals - family men (and women and children), students, construction workers, restaurant staff, delivery guys, often born and raised in America.

Civil rights workers and legal advocates say this approach, much like that of Elon Musk's DOGE goons, is deliberately designed to create a climate of fear and intimidation, and to undermine public trust. It is quite literally terrorism. Masked men do not feel accountable because they cannot be identified, and so they are much more likely to engage in violence and to flout the existing laws. There have already been cases of people impersonating ICE or Homeland Security agents to carry out robberies and other crimes.

It can't be long until cattle prods and state-sanctioned rapes become part of the American urban landcscape.

MAGA feeling threatened by the new Superman movie

The MAGA-verse is up in arms about the new Superman movie. I kid you not.

Many right-wing commentators - Kellyanne Conway, Jesse Watters, Ben Shapiro, Tim Pool, End Wokeness and others - have taken issue with director/writer James Gunn's characterization of the Superman story as an immigrant narrative.

Clearly, it IS.(and always has been) an immigrant narrative - Kal-El came from the planet Krypton, and landed in rural Kansas as an illegal immigrant. Superman's original creators, Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster, were the childen of Jewish immigrants from Europe in the early 20th century. 

MAGA, of course, clearly feels threatened by the portrayal of America's greatest ever hero as an immigrant, legal or otherwise. I guess they have never thought about it before. Gunn, let it be said, is unarguably a political animal, and probably deliberately stressed the immigrant/outsider aspect of his movie. But MAGA is going off half-cocked, and not responding very coolly (or rationally).

Hell, Trump himself is the son of a Scottish immigrant mother and a son-of-a-German immigrant father. Like Canada, hardly anybody in America is that far removed from immigrant forebears. Why is immigration such a big deal for Republicans. Oh, wait, some of them are not even white, right?

Trump's tariffs nothing to to do with economics

As Trump threatens more tariffs on Canada - 35% this time, supposedly starting August 1st, unless of course that changes - he is still trying to tie it to the perceived egregious supply of fentanyl and other drugs from Canada to USA.

As had been noted before, months ago, the flow of fentanyl from Canada to the United States is miniscule - of the order of 0.2%, according to the US's own Customs and Border Control agency - with 99% of it actually coming in from the Mexican border. Maybe he's getting the two countries mixed up? Easily done. 

In fact, there are many more drugs (principally methamphetamine, cocaine and fentanyl) flowing from the US to Canada than the other way round. Not to mention guns and other bad stuff

I'm sure someone has explained all this to him, although given how shit-scared all his staff seem to be of saying anything that might be seen to contradict him, that is by no means certain. Mark Carney should be very sure to mention it to him, though. It's possible, just possible, that he doesn't know.

But we should be past the stage of trying to find rhyme or reason in all this. The US tariffs, in general terms, are supposed to be about correcting the "unfair" trade balances countries have with America. But Brazil just got slapped with a 50% tariff, and they have a negative trade balance with the US. 

The justification Trump uses there is that he objects to the country's treatment of ex-President Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro, an old Trump buddy and copycat, and fellow far-right populist, is currently on trial for trying to stage a Trump-style coup after he lost the vote in the last Brazilian elections. So, nothing to do with economics, then. This is public policy based on whims, grudges and the Old Boy's Network. And the rates - 25%, 30%, 35%, 50% - completely random.

The whole world, apart from some Republican extremists in the USA, are now heartily sick of the whole random Trump tariff thing. A world that was operating, at least macro-ecconomically, quite well before he showed up, is now in tatters, all due to the misguided beliefs of one man. He has set one country against another, and destroyed any goodwill the world bore towards the USA. 

History will certaunly judge him badly, whatever he.says, but in the meantime, we have to live through that history.

Canadian army members' revolutionary plans are kind of ludicrous

Well, this is kind of crazy. The RCMP has arrested four members of the Canadian Armed Forces.(CAF) on terrorism (and related) charges. The four Quebec squaddies diverted a huge number of guns, ammo, grenades, night-vision goggles and laser-sighters, etc, in an unprecedented ideologically-motivated plot by extemist army members to form an "anti-government militia" and take over some land in the Quebec City area. I'm not entirely sure how this qualifies as "terrorism", but I'll take that on trust.

These guys apparently held their own military-style training exercises - shooting, ambushing, survival and navigation - and there are even some awkward posed photos of at least some of them holding their oversized guns on social media. It's rather cute in some ways - like a group of boys playing at soldiers, except these ARE soldiers, and the weapons are real. Two of the four are current active CAF members.

It's thought they have ties with some pretty shadowy extreme right-wing groups. For example, there is a Facebook group called the "Blue Hackle Mafia", which boasts many members of the CAF, and which features "racist, misogynistic, homophobic and antisemitic comments and images", and there is speculation that the four would-be revolutionaries are also involved in various white supremacist groups.

But it was the detail about their plans to "forcibly take possession of land in the Quebec City area" that struck me most. It seemed like such a modest goal. And what would they do there? Hold military parades? Farm it? They apparently wanted to set up an "anti-government community" north of Quebec, which sounds rather quaint, like a hippy commune or something.

You just have this feeling that they didn't quite think it all the way through. The whole thing seems equal parts scary and hilarious.

The Enhanced Games could only happen in Trump's America

Disillusioned about the Olympic Games? Yeah, me too. Cheating, drug dealing and graft are par for the course these days (arguably they always were). But, woah, I don't see this as the solution.

The Enhanced Games will hold its inaugural competition in Las Vegas on May 2026. Yes, you read that right. It's a sports competition celebrating unabashed performance-enhancing drugs use. The brainchild of Australian lawyer Aron D'Souza, and bankrolled by the likes of maverick tech bro billionaire Peter Thiel and all-round idiot Donald Trump Jr., it was perhaps inevitable that just about the only place to hold it would be in Donald Trump's brash iconclastic America.

The USA's anti-doping in sports stance remains one of the strictest in the world - their top 100-metres sprinter was banned for smoking weed in the 2021 Olympics. So, it will be interesting to see how this new initiative progresses, and whether it takes hold in the public's imagination. 

Questions abound. Which athletes will be willing to burn their bridges and compete? Is it safe (probably not)? Will enough people watch it to make it worthwhile, and to pave the way for future development (again probably not, but who knows)?

Most Olympic athletes and the official responses from country representatives have, predictably, been very negative about the enterprise, despite ongoing complaints about athletes' pay and allegations of secret and unmitigated doping in the established sports competition world. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) calls it a "betrayal of everything that we stand for".

But if it ever takes off, the time would be now and in Trump's America.

China does not seem to understand Buddhism

Here's an excellent quote from Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning: "The reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and other living Buddhas must be approved by the central government".

This, of course, is China trying to assert its authority over the Tibetan government-in-exile. But I can't help but think that they have the whole thing rather misunderstood. Dalai Lamas are not voted in by government committee, and they are certainly not imposed by government decree as Ms. Mao seems to think.

You can roll your eyes to your heart's content over the idea of a religious leader appearing as a reincarnation, especially one that is somehow picked by the Gaden Phodrang Trust. But China's willful misconstructions are even more hilarious.

No DST - what's the plan, Mark?

Many Canadians have reacted to the news that, late last night, Mark Carney summarily rescinded the Digital Services Tax (DST), the tax - announced way back in 2020, but scheduled to come into force today - on profits made in Canada by foreign Internet-based companies like Amazon, Meta, Netflix, Google, Uber, AirBnB, etc.

The reason? Because Donald Trump doesn't like it. And that is no exaggeration. The threat of the tax has been hanging around for years now, and the USA (including Joe Biden and the previous Democrat administration) has taken particular exception to it because, although the perfectly defensible 3% tax applies to any non-Canadian tech company, a good 90% of them just happen to be American, and the US considers it unfair and discriminatory, even if it's not. 

In the last few days, Trump seem to have belatedly discovered it and lashed out at Canada all over again, specifically ending all further trade negotiations with Canada until the planned tax is removed. Carney moved quickly to do just that, arguing that cancelling the DST was necessary in order to keep the negotiations going.

But many Canadians are incensed. The tax was expected to bring in about $2 billion this week, given its 2-year retroactive clause, and almost a billion a year thereafter, and now we have nothing to show for it - no tax income and no leverage in the ongoing tariff negotiations. It does seem like we gave in to Trump's bully tactics with no advantage gained, and we are now back at square one with the tariff negotiations, but with one fewer bargaining chips.

As some of the comments of Canadians express, what are we to do with our elbows now? Elbows up or elbows down or neither (just sit quietly and politely at the table)? Did Canada indeed "cave", as the White House has it, did it make a "big mistake"? Maybe Carey and his team know more about negotiating than we do - well, of course they do! - but what is the plan, Mark?