Canadian cities triumph in new sustainability index

Well, this is surprising. A new ranking of the greenest and most sustainable cities in the world has three Canadian cities in the top ten, with one Canadian city right at the top of the pile.

The Green Cities Index, by Dutch sustainability experts Reinders Corporation (whoch makes industrial climate systems, dehumidifiers, etc), takes into account accessibility of green space per capita, renewable energy usage, air quality, public transportation efficiency, bikeability, and a few other measures. It shows Vancouver at No. 1, above the likes of Oslo, Stockholm and Copenhagen. Montreal is at No 7, and hometown Toronto comes in at No. 9.

I don't think of our cities as being in the same league as many European cities as regards suatainability, so this comes as quite a (pleasant) surprise. Vancouver scored particularly highly on green space and renewable energy, and had the best air quality in the study (this was presumably measured outside of wildfire season).

The full top 10 is:

1. Vancouver, Canada
2. Oslo Norway
3. Stockholm, Sweden
4. Munich, Germany
5. Zurich, Switzerland
6. Copenhagen, Denmark
7. Montreal, Canada
8. Sam Francisco, USA
9. Toronto Canada
10. London, UK

Interestingly, although the findings are reported by several media outlets, I can't find a link to the original Reinders index. Also interesting that a similar exercise by Canadian sustainability organization Corporate Knights has Vancouver down at No. 10, Toronto at No. 15, and, yes, the Scandinavian cities at the top.

What is fire?

So, here's a question: what actually is fire? Of course, everyone knows what fire is. We've known since the Stone Age, right?

Well, yes and no. We might think we know what fire is because it's so familiar. But scientifically, it's kind of hard to pin down.

Clearly, it's not a solid or a liquid. So, maybe a gas? The flames of a fire do involve hot gas products, which rise because they are less dense than the surrounding cooler air. But the flames we see are actually burning soot (burned particles of carbon) that glows yellow-orange because of the high temperatures. However, the flames only exist while the fire is burning, and don't exist in a stable state on their own. They can't be collected in a jar like CO2 or water vapour, and so they are not a gas.

How about plasma, the fourth state of matter? Plasma is like a soup of charged particles, electrons and ionized atoms. It's possible there might be enough ionized atoms in the hottest part of the most intense fires to qualify as a kind of weak plasma, but fire as a whole does not behave as a plasma.

In fact, it turns out that fire is not matter at all. Fire is a process, a kind of chemical reaction called combustion, which requires fuel (something to burn), oxygen, and an initial spark or heat source. Interestingly, it seems that fire - with visible oxygen-fuelled flames - is unique to Planet Earth (or so this Science Alert article claims, although this seems improbable to me).

Who is Kevin Hassett and why is he the front-runner for Fed Chair?

I confess I'd never even heard of Kevin Hassett until just recently, when he's suddenly the front-runner - possibly the only runner-  for the job of director the United States Federal Reserve (the Fed), one of the most powerful positions in the USA.

Well, it used to be a powerful position. Under Trump 2.0 it may well be demoted to the status of a largely ceremonial quango. Never shy of controversy, Donald Trump has publicly stated that "Anybody that disagrees with me will never be the Fed Chairman". Chilling stuff. Of course, Hassett is on record as saying that Trump would have "no weight" in interest rate decisions, but everyone knows differently: under Trump, the Fed's sole job is to reduce interest rates.

But, even more chilling is that there was a time - a time that lasted decades - when Hassett would definitely not have fit the mould for Trump's Fed director. See, he used to be an outspoken proponent of free trade and of the economic necessity for immigration. But then, suddenly, he seems to have experienced a Paulian conversion to isolationism, tariffs and the mass deportation of immigrants, coincidentally the very same policies that Trump espouses. His ex-friends and colleagues say they don't recognize the man.

So, what happened to disabuse him of beliefs he has held most of his adult life? Hassett himself says "I signed up with Trump knowing that some in my party might never forgive me ... I did so because Trump saw truths in plain sight ignored by politicial professionals and coastal elites". Eeeuww! 

So, is Trump's economic vision so very compelling? (Most economists disagree with it.) Is Trump just really that persuasive? Does he have some sort of a hold over Hassett? Or is Hassett either so submissive or so nakedly ambitious that he is willing to sacrifice all his beliefs and principles to get to the top of the pile (or what passes for the top of the pile under Trump)?

Hassett was a Colombia University Business School professor and an advisor to George Bush John McCain and Mitt Romney before joining Trump's National Economic Council. There are those, even within the Trump administration, who maintain that Hassett does not deserve the top Fed job anyway, particularly as he has not been at all effective as head of the National Economic Council. They say that all Hassett did at the NEC was to serve as a public messenger for Trump's agenda, without personally contributing to driving policy at all.

But, wait, that's EXACTLY the brief for Trump's Chair of the Federal Reserve. Hassett will be perfect!

Disturbingly, 2026 is looking even worse than 2025

The BBC's world affairs editor John Simpson has been reporting on wars around the world for some 60 years, since the 1960s. He is not a man prone to exaggeration; he is a meticulous and thoughtful journalist, and I have a great deal of respect for him and his views. So, when Mr. Simpson says he has never see a year like 2025, in terms of global conflicts, and he is worried as hell about 2026, I sit up and pay attention.

He sees 2025, and by extension, 2026, as a crucial year in world affairs. It was notable, not just because of the sheer number of major conflicts going on around the world, although that was part if it, with wars continuing in Ukraine-Russia (the total number of deaths is highly contested but it may be in the region of 400,000, with over a million in total casualties), in Palestine-Israel (over 70,000 deaths so far), in Sudan (150,000 deaths), in Cambodia-Thailand (only 50-60 killed so far but with plenty of potential for more), not to mention ongoing internal conflicts in Somalia, Myanmar, Congo, Ethiopia, and others. But what was notable to Mr. Simpson was the potential for one of those wars to bloom into a full-scale world war. (And, as I say, Simpson is a circumspect and judicious writer.)

The war in Ukraine is almost 3 years old now, and hundreds of peace initiatives have been tried and failed. With a much more pro-Russia American president in power, you can almost see Putin rubbing his hands with glee. Trump's apparent lack of interest in Europe and NATO, and America's fading influence and increasing isolationism, can only strengthen Putin's hand, as is becoming increasingly apparent. There are even references to a potential nuclear confrontation being casually dropped.

Conflicts such as the Vietnam War, the Gulf Wars and Kosovo all had the potential to tip over into something resembling a world war, but escalation was avoided. Mr. Simpson is less confident that escalation can be avoided in the case of Ukraine. President Zelenskyy himself has warned of the possibility, and Putin and some of his more hawkish henchmen have used some alarming language.

And then, of course, there is always China, whose alarming threats about Taiwan are ever-present. It has been carrying out some large-scale military drills in the area, and generally pushing boundaries to see what response it elicits from the West. It has ramped up its war of words. China's increasing influence on world affairs and its increasing economic power might give it the confidence to make a move in 2026. And America won't take that one lying down.

So, with all that doom and gloom, I wish you a happy and prosperous New Year. Oh, how I wish it!

Agave is the new plastic

I had drinks today through an agave-based straw. Who knew there was such a thing?

The Sustainable Agave Company makes all those hard-to-replace single-use-plastic items like straws, cutlery and cups out of waste agave from the tequila industry.

It felt for all the world just like plastic. Definitely not going soggy anytime soon. I was impressed.

Even better, although all the stuff on their website is priced in US dollars, it turns out the company is Canadian, based in Toronto, and had been around since 2020.

Trump's top 25 lies of 2025

Well, CNN set itself a tough task: to come up with the top 25 Trump lies of 2025.

From all the many hundreds/thousands, picking 25 is not easy. They say they chose some because of the number of times they were repeated, some because of the importance of the topic, and some just because they were so bizarre or egregious.

Anyway, what they came up with was:

• Trump secured $17 or $18 trillon in investment in 2025
• "Every price is down"
• Trump was reducing prescription drug prices by "2,000%, 3,000%"
• Foreign countries pay the US government tariffs
• Portland was "burning down"
• Washington DC had no murders for six months
• "I invaded Los Angeles and we opened up the water"
• The Democratic governor of Maryland called Trump "the greatest president of my lifetime"
• Ukraine "started" Russia's war on Ukraine
• Trump was speaking "in jest" when he promised to immediately end the Ukraine war
• The US government had planned to spend $50 million on "condoms for Hamas"
• Every drug boat in the Caribbean "kills 25,000 Americans"
• Trump "didn't say" he had no problem releasing full footage of a September boat strike
• Numerous foreign leaders emptied prisons and mental institutions to send their most undesirable people into the US
• Trump ended seven or eight wars
• "The people of Canada like" the idea of becoming the 51st US state
• Capitol rioters "didn't assault"
• Critical media coverage of Trump is "illegal"
• Trump didn't pressure the Justice Department to go after his opponents
• Obama, Biden and Comey made up the Epstein files
• The 2020 election was "rigged and stolen"
• The US is "the only country in the world" with mail-in voting
• Babies get 80-plus vaccines at once
• Trump's big domestic policy bill didn't change Medicaid
• The domestic policy bill was "the single most popular bill ever signed"

As good a list as any, I guess, and I've covered many of them in this very blog over the months. Seeing them there all together, though, makes you realize the enormity of what Trump has been feeding the American public, and just how serious a psychological problem he has.

Should the US be involving itself in Nigeria?

Donald Trump has a new crusade to fight: hundreds of thousands of Christians are being killed by Muslim fundamentalists in Nigeria. He accuses Islamic State (IS) of "targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even centuries!", and accuses the Nigerian government of continuing "to allow the killing of Christians", which of course Nigeria denies. But that is more than enough for him to wade into a neutral country and carry out military strikes there, which is his idea of fun. Mr. Trump wished a merry Christmas to "dead terrorists".

The Nigerian Foreign Minister, on the other hand, told the BBC that the multiple air strikes on Christmas Day were were part of a "joint operation" in a region of northwestern Nigeria where IS is know to have operations, and that they had "nothing to do with a particular religion". But hey, let's not quibble, Trump may have misunderstood that part. 

But - just as with his ongoing campaign against Venezuela and his characterization of the Afrikaners in South Africa - a detailed BBC report shows that it's not even clear that Trump is working from reliable information. Individuals as varied as Ted Cruz and TV host Bill Maher have been pushing the narrative that the Nigerian Jihadist group Boko Haram (not Islamic State, but hey, they're all the same, right?) has been responsible for killing "over 100,000" (or possibly "50,000"?) Christians, and burning "18,000 churches" and "2,000 Christian schools". This stuff gets disseminated widely, and elaborated upon, by the Republican social media machine.

When pressed, these activists almost all refer back to reports by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (InterSociety for short), which monitors and tracks human rights abuses across Nigeria. InterSociety claims that jihadist groups have killed 100,000 Christians between 2009 and 2025, as well as 60,000 "moderate Muslims", although it's not entirely clear where they get these figures from. The data sources they do mention do not seem to reflect the figures they publish, according to the BBC. In the first two-thirds of 2025 alone, InterSociety claims that 7,000 Christians were killed, based, they say, on media reports, even though most of those media reports do not actually mention the religious identity of victims.

Both Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa tend to operate almost exclusively in north and northeastern Nigeria, which is a predominantly Muslim region, an area where relatively few Christians live. Nigeria's huge 236 million population is pretty much evenly split between Muslims and Christians, so calling it an "existential threat" for Christians (Trump again) is clearly ridiculous, as are claims from other US Christian groups and Republican politicians that Christians in the country could be "completely wiped out".

InterSociety also includes in its figures deaths at the hands of the militant (largely Muslim) Fulani cattle and sheep herders, which researchers say are mainly protesting about access to land and water and other ethnic tensions, and are not jihadists as InterSociety characterizes them. InterSociety itself has been accused of links with the Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob), a proscribed group fighting for a breakaway state in the mainly Christian southeast of Nigeria. The Biafra Republic Government in Exile (BRGE) has also played a key role in promoting the "Christian genocide" in the US Congress over the years.

Nigerian politics - like that of the US, but even more so - is complicated and murky. It is far from clear that any kind of Christian genocide, or even a concerted anti-Christian hostility or persecution, is happening in Nigeria. It's even less clear that the USA should be throwing its weight around there. For an administration that claims it wants nothing to do with any "forever wars", it's sure doing a lot to start them.

And where are we with robotaxis and self-driving cars?

I confess I had written off self-driving cars completely several years ago, after a series of accidents and the admission that, actually, self-driving cars were not as easy as initially predicted, and that maybe some problems (including those tricky moral ones) maybe forever outside the purview of computers.

But, undeterred, some companies have persisted with the idea, with mixed results. The biggest, best-known ones are Tesla's Robotaxi (which uses its popular Model Y cars) and Google/Alphabet's Waymo (which uses the sexier Jaguar i-Pace sports utility vehicle). But other companies are also in with a shout, including Uber's Avride, Amazon's Zoox, Volkswagen, and Aurora's driverless trucks. (Some companies, like GM, have retreated from their autonomous car aspirations.)

They are progressing, if slowly, although Tesla in particular is progressing much slower than Mr. Musk led us to believe. It has a modest 30 Robotaxis operating in Austin, Texas (which seems to be ground zero for autonomous car testing), and they all have a human in the passenger seat monitoring them, for now at least. That's a far cry from Musk's 2016 promise of cars driving themselves across the country within two years, and his 2019 promise of a million Robotaxis on the road within a year. 

Google's Waymo fleet is larger (Google actually started its self-driving car research well before Tesla), with about 200 vehicles in Austin, and another 2,300 in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Atlanta, with plans to extend to 20 more cities in 2026, including Dallas, Washington, Miami, and London, England. Waymos operate without human monitors.

Mr. Musk is still saying that, after a slow, cautious start, Tesla will overtake Waymo and, for some reason, many deep-pocketed investors seem to believe him. Millions of Teslas on the road today have the hardware to convert into self-driving vehicles with just a tweak of the software. Plus, Tesla's system relies solely on cameras (lots of cameras), while Waymo and other companies use a combination of cameras, radar and laser sensors. Cameras alone are a cheaper solution, but they can easily be flummoxed by fog, snow, glare and other factors, and many commentators see Tesla's fixation with cameras as a severe limitation, especially as the cost of radar and laser sensors continues to fall.

It's far from clear that self-driving cars and taxis will ever generate trillions of dollars in revenue, as Musk insists, or that they will ever achieve profitability. There are many hidden overheads, like manned monitoring centres, special cleaning, etc, that are rarely mentioned. Power outages, as occurred in San Francisco recently, are also a potential issue, as self-driving cars grind to halt in that eventuality. They still have problems understanding hand signals, and have often been reported ignoring police officers, firefighters and emergency workers trying to direct traffic (and even, in numerous occasions, ignoring a school bus' signals), resulting in some close calls. A driverless Waymo tax in Scottsdale, Arizona went AWOL earlier this year, and started spinning in circles in a parking lot, with the hapless passenger locked in. Although no deaths for some time...

UPDATE

Of course, these are just the Western/American developments. As you might imagine, China is way ahead on this stuff. Baidu's Apollo Go driverless taxi service has been operating in dozens of colors in China for some time now, and has accumulated millions of driverless rides. Ride-sharing apps Uber and Lyft have recently announced partnerships with Baidu, and Chinese robotaxis are expected to hit the streets of London and other western cities next year.

Where are we with those tariffs?

With all the comings and goings and ins and outs, and all the misinformation coming from south of the border, it's hard to know where we are with Trump's tariffs. An Associated Press article tries to make some sense of it.

Trump's overnight pivot from free trade to protectionism has resulted in double-digit taxes on American imports from pretty much everywhere, which has strained the budgets of consumers and businesses across the world, but especially in America. It has upended the global supply chain, and produced one of the most turbulent economic years in living memory.

With all the comings and goings, it's hard to get an idea of the overall "effective" tariff rate on US imports. The Budget Lab at Yale University have crunched the numbers for us, and it seems that number is currently at around 17%, about seven times high than before Trump got going at the start of this year, but not as high as mid-year.

Those tariffs have indeed raised lots of money, as Trump keeps reminding us, about $236 billion up to the end of November. But this still remains a small fraction of overall government revenue, and nothing like enough to replace federal income taxes, as Trump also claims. In fact, much of it will probably go to subsidizing US farmers for the sharp decrease in their incomes.

And yes, it has all had some effect on the US trade deficit, the single main reason for the tariffs according to Trump, but perhaps not as much as you (or he) might expect. In fact, the deficit got worse in the first quarter of the year, as panicked American companies tried to get ahead of the main tariff impositions, before settling back to around $50-$60 billion a month. Certainly, the increased tariff revenue does not come close to offsetting the trade deficit, which was also an oft-stated goal.

Imports from America's main trading partners have shifted a bit as a result of all the horse-trading that had been going on (and continues to go on). Imports from China have fallen a lot, and those from Canada a little bit; imports from Mexico, Vietnam and Taiwan, though, have increased (the latter two substantially).

So, was any of this worth all the agony, stress and disruption it has caused? Probably not. Trump would never admit that, of course. Although his popularity ratings are taking a significant hit as the effects of his tariffs start to be felt, a lot of MAGA Republicans - probably most of whom were free trade enthusiasts before they were hoodwinked and gaslit into being protectionists - still have implicit faith in the Trump method. It's a strange world we live in, particularly those unfortunate enough to live in the United States.

What is vibe-coding, and does it work?

Maybe you've never even heard of vibe-coding - it's a pretty recent phenomenon - but it's all the rage in the technology world. Essentially, vibe-coding is using an artificial intelligence (AI) platform to allow amateurs and non-coders to create functioning software and websites.

Sounds easy, eh? You just use a vibe-coding platform like Lovable or Cursor (recent start-ups already worth billions of dollars), or even more familiar large language models like Gemini or Claude or ChatGPT, and use everyday conversational prompts, and the AI does the rest.

Except, of course, it's not as simple as that, as the Globe article explains. It can be a confusing and frustrating experience, and the AI is quite likely to throw out buggy software full of security risks, that doesn't bear any resemblance to the masterpiece you had in mind, and quite likely doesn't even work. One study found that AI models introduced known security flaws about 45% of the time. In fact, a whole sub-industry has grown up of humans - "vibe-coding clean-up specialists" - who can fix the errors in amateur vibe-coding projects.

In the hands of experienced coders, though, vibe-coding can be a substantial time-saver (saving several hours each week according to some). Using it, startups can grow faster, with fewer employees. Vibe-coding for individuals, though, can prove expensive, as the platforms charge for credits to use its services which, as we have seen, can be inefficient and frustrating. University computer science professors are having to adapt too, such as by insisting that students walk teachers through their code to make sure they actually understand how it works.

Some studies have found that, overall, vibe-coding does not really improve productivity. Aficionados, of course, just see this as teething problems in a new and emerging industry. The proof will emerge over time. Although, by then, some new breakthrough will no doubt have materialized, upending everything we thought we knew :(

So much for all that redacting....

A lot of people are complaining about the extent of the redactions - all those thick black lines - in the recently-released Epstein files. And, of course, some people are finding ways round them.

Apparently, if you just copy the text, and paste it into a new unformatted document, some of the redactions disappear, a known security flaw in some PDF documents. (I'm not sure why it should work for some documents and not others.) Others say that, if you take a screen shot on your phone and play around with some standard image-editing features (like brightness, contrast, etc), you can start to see the redacted text.

None of this is very lawful, I'm guessing. But, given that very few people trust the Trump administration to redact things fairly, it's not surprising that people are trying.

Mark Carney seems like a nice guy, but he has abandoned the environment

Prime Minister Mark Carney's honeymoon period seems to be extending much longer than I had expected. Most liberals still seem to like him, and many conservatives have joined them (which shouldn't surprise us too much given that most of his policies are very much conservative ones, regardless of the party he is supposed to be leading).

Me, I'm feeling a bit sour about the guy. Perhaps the best that can be said is that he's not Pierre Poilievre. And he's been given a crappy job, to be fair, battling against the headwinds of Trumpism. But he has now abandoned too many liberal/progressive stances to be taken seriously as a Liberal or a progressive. Most glaringly, he has abandoned the environment in general and the fight against climate change in particular. 

I said this to a Liberal friend recently and she insisted that, no, no, no, he hasn't abandoned it, he has a plan, a long-term plan. But that's not at all evident to me. It seems to me that Carney - who once talked a good game on climate change and other issues - has decided that the economy is more important than the environment. And, short-term, he may be right, but long-term this will take some recovering from.

Anyway, someone else has done the hard work of keeping track of the extent to which Carney has dropped the climate change ball. University of Toronto prof and climate activist Laura Tozer lists the evidence in a handy little crib-sheet on her LinkedIn post:

❌ Suspended Canada's Clean Electricity Regulations in Alberta ❌ Weakened methane regulations ❌ Scrapped the Oil & Gas Sector Emissions Cap ❌ Abandoned Canada’s consumer carbon pricing system ❌ Ended Canada Greener Homes retrofit program to electrify and improve household efficiency ❌ Ended Canada Greener Homes Loan Program to electrify and improve household efficiency ❌ Ended the Electric Vehicles (iZEV) program ❌ Delayed Canada’s Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate ❌ Passed bill C5 ‘Building Canada Act’ to allow government to override 12 laws and 7 regulations, including the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, for designated projects ❌ Committed to clawing back Canada’s anti-greenwashing legislation ❌ Announced plans to eliminate a tax on private jets and yachts ❌ Weakened the Alberta industrial carbon price from the $170/tonne it should have been (if the federal government enforced its own policies) to $130/tonne

Not a very auspicious summary, is it? And I don't see much evidence of a plan there, long-term or otherwise.

Trump's cancellation of offshore wind projects makes no sense

Donald Trump has cancelled five more offshore wind power projects along the east coast, despite them being well advanced, with billions of dollars already sunk into them. It's worth looking into exactly why he would do such a thing.

The US is in need of more electricity production, as even Trump agrees, but Trump wants to see any new power generated by coal, oil and gas, because, for whatever reason, he likes fossil fuels and he hates clean renewable energy. It's not very clear why he hates wind power so much, but it may just come down to an offshore wind project spoiling the view at one of his golf courses in Scotland. Yes, he's that petty. He has blamed wind turbines for causing cancer, killing whales, all sorts of unjustifiable claims.

But, of course [sic], he can't just come out and say that he is cancelling the wind farms because he doesn't like them; he would get laughed out of town. So, he falls back on his tried and tested excuse for pretty much anything illogical - "emergency national security concerns". And, because the words "national security" are in there, he doesn't have to explain any further, he can just say that the reasons are "classified".

The only national security concern anyone can think of in respect to wind turbines is interference with radio signals, due to reflection by the moving blades on wind towers. This could theoretically interfere with target tracking and impede critical weather forecasting, something the Department of Energy under Trump has talked about before, although countries like the UK and Denmark have been using offshore wind for decades without any such national security concerns. 

Conceivably, the very need for more power could be framed as an "emergency national security concern". Such a designation, by its very nature, means that discussion and explanation are out of the question because, well, national security. But if the problem is lack of power, cancelling almost finished wind projects that would provide said power doesn't make much sense. 

Wind currently generates about 10% of America's electricity, with most wind farms located on the Great Plains of Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa and Illinois, where the winds are "steady and consistent". The smaller number of offshore wind farms are mainly off the east coast, where winds are also steady and consistent, and where they are close to major population centres. It is one of the cheapest sources of power nowadays, much cheaper than coal or gas, and certainly less polluting.

Cancelling these offshore wind projects will waste billions of dollars in already sunk costs (who will pay for that?), and say goodbye to 6 to 8 gigawatts of annual power, enough to heat and light millions of homes in an area where it is most needed. But logic is not Trump's strong suit. He doesn't care about achieving net zero, or reducing the country's carbon footprint. He doesn't even care about economics unless it serves his ideological predilections. He prefers to just go with his gut, and everyone around him seems content to let him.

Cash is no longer king, but we still need it

In an increasingly digital world, cash seems like an unnecessary anachronism. But there are actually compelling reasons not to abandon cash completely.

Paper money accounts for just 20% of all financial transactions these days, down from 54% just 15 years ago. A fifth of Canadians no longer carry any cash around with them. But if we were to go completely digital, as some would have us do, we would probably regret it. 

The Canadian government's Bill C-2, designed to make money laundering more difficult, would actually make the use of cash in general more difficult, by making large cash payments, donations and deposits illegal, and banning the use of "night drops" of business' cash earnings (which actually puts the businesses at higher risk). That has many people upset for a variety of reasons. It's also another step towards a completely cashless society, which, it is argued, would be a mistake.

First off, cash is not reliant on electricity, a communications network, or a secure payments system. The increasing prevalence of wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural (and unnatural) disasters puts the whole system needed for digital transactions at risk. Case in point, back-to-back typhoons decimated the infrastructure of the Philippines just last month, and the resulting devastation was made much worse by the breakdown in its financial system. Point-of-sale machines went down, e-wallets became useless, cellphones died, and Filipinos had no way to spend their money, even to buy a loaf of bread, in the county's almost-completely-digital financial system. A similar thing happened in China's Hainan province the previous year.

Digital finances are also vulnerable to hacking by malcontents and hostile countries. After Russia invaded Ukraine, physically and digitally, in 2022, cash use in Ukraine (and several other nearby countries) spiked, as the inhabitants worried that Russia would come for their life savings through cyber-attacks. And don't even get me started on the now regular hacking of bitcoins and other supposedly secure crypto-currencies.

Some people like cash because it offers an easy way to budget, and a hard cap on what they can spend, while credit cards and online transactions open up their entire borrowing limit, risking gross overspending.

Some 12% of Canadians don't even have a credit card at all - an astonishing statistic in itself - and rely on cash to survive. Victims of domestic abuse are encouraged to keep a stockpile of cash, just in case they are cut off from their funds. First Nations reserves pretty much run on cash, and many older people the world over use nothing else. Even many small businesses prefer cash, as it avoids those steep credit card fees.

I don't use much cash myself, particularly since the pandemic, when a lot of old habits bit the dust. But I always have some on hand, just in case. 

On the virtues of solitude

Finally, an article extolling the merits of solitude! I'm not one of the world's great socializers. I like my "me time", always have done. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a complete misanthrope: I do socialize, although it's usually my wife (or a third person) that initiates it. But solitude has earned a bad rap in recent years, and that seems a shame to me.

The main reason, of course, is the veritable explosion of research and media coverage on loneliness. We are told that loneliness is approaching epidemic levels, and that social isolation increases the risk of premature death by 25%, worse than drinking six alcoholic drinks a day, or smoking fifteen cigarettes!

But, as this article stresses, loneliness is not solitude. You can be lonely in a crowded room. People, generally speaking, don't choose to be lonely. Solitude, however, is a deliberate choice to be on your own for a while, to step off the social "stage", with all its stresses, preconceptions and rules, to spend some quiet time alone. Solitude is often thought of as a punishment (time-out for an unruly toddler, solitary confinement for a recalcitrant prisoner), but it can also be a reward: the gift of some "me time" and relaxation.

It doesn't have to involve a two-hour walk in the woods; it can just be 15 minutes snatched away from the social whirlwind. It doesn't have to be structured meditation on a yoga mat; it can just be time spent idly day-dreaming (there's an increasing body of positive research around letting your mind wander too). Read a book, listen to music, knit, go for that two-hour walk in the woods, whatever works for you. Don't use it to catch up on emails or special media, though - that's not solitude. And don't be alone ALL the time; that's not healthy.

There's even some real research to show that some solitude can be beneficial. The "deactivation effect" helps us to calm down by taking the edge off our more intense emotions. It may even serve to recharge our "social batteries", making subsequent social interactions more positive and enjoyable. It presents an opportunity for self-discovery and reflection, and it can be an incubator for problem-solving and creativity.

So, don't be brow-beaten into going to a party you will probably hate. Don't give in to expectations and assumptions that entertaining and mingling is civilized, and time spent alone is depressing and misanthropic. It can actually be quite nice.

One of the world's weirdest plants

It looks like a kid's plasticine model of a fungus, or possibly some kind of sex toy, but it's actually one of the world's weirdest plants. This is balanophora fungosa. It doesn't really have a common name, although it's sometimes called fungus root. It's said to smell like mice!

It's pretty rare, growing only in the steamy subtropical mountains of Taiwan and parts of Japan. It has some close relatives in South Asia, South-East Asia, Australia and some Pacific Islands. It's actually an angiosperm, or flowering plant, related to, you know, daisies, roses and such like, but it's very different from daisies and roses in several respects.

For one thing, it contains no chlorophyll and so does not grow by photosynthesis like most plants. It also lacks a conventional root system, instead attaching itself to the roots of nearby trees and stealing its nutrients parasitically (although it does still retain some plastids, the organelles that normal plants use to enable photosynthesis).

The plant can also reproduce without fertilization, which is very rare in the plant world, using a process known as "facultative aganospermy" - essentially, it clones itself. This can be useful, but it also leaves it highly vulnerable to habitat loss, as it is very dependent on specific conditions and tree hosts.

It does technically have flowers and seeds, some of the smallest flowers and seeds in the plant world. Thousands of tiny female flowers are contained the bulbous structure at the top, with a much smaller number of male flowers are at its base.

So, yes, pretty weird. And, of course, given its very specific habitat and the encroachment of humans, it's endangered.

The world's most populous cities

I'm sure that, just a few short years ago, Mexico City was the biggest city in the world (by population). Well, fast forward to 2025, and Mexico City is the 15th largest city!

Today the world's most populous cities are pretty much all in Asia:

• Jakarta, Indonesia: 41.9 million
• Dhaka, Bangladesh: 36.6 million
• Tokyo, Japan: 33.4 million
• New Delhi, India: 30.2 million
• Shanghai, China: 29.6 million
• Guangzhou, China: 27.6 million
• Cairo, Egypt: 25.6 million
• Manila, Philippines: 24.7 million
• Kolkata, India: 22.6 million
• Seoul, South Korea: 22.5 million

(Cairo is the only non-Asian city in the top 10.)

Iran is moving its capital city

Iran is in the process of moving its capital city. Tehran, a city of 9 million inhabitants (15 million in the entire metropolitan area) is now widely considered to be unsustainable.

Tehran has been the capital of Iran/Persia since 1786, but it is by no means the original capital. In fact, Tehran is the 32nd location of the country's capital throughout its long and turbulent history. Now, though, an acute water shortage ("water bankruptcy") due to its rapidly-draining underground aquifers, regular earthquakes, and the compressing and sinking land it is built on (it is sinking at an alarming 35cm a year!) has led to President Pezeshkian's decision that the whole capital city should be moved nearly 2,000km to the under-developed and remote Makran coast in the far south of the country. The idea has been in the air for at least 25 years, but never acted on until now (maybe).

Climate change (particularly in the form of failed rains) is, of course, part of the reason, but experts say that land, water and and waste-water mismanagement, overpopulation, air pollution, power shortages, and rampant corruption, have all made the natural crisis much worse. The Makran region is known for its harsh climate and difficult terrain, and it is by no means certain that such a move will in fact be viable, but the writing is on the wall for Tehran, and the President is finally admitting that they now have little choice in the matter. 

Moving a whole megacity and all its administrative, commercial and government functions is expected to cost the country north of $100 billion. Estimates for the time required vary between 25 and 100 years! But what else to do?

How the internet can help heat our homes

Scandinavia comes up with another environmental first: Finland is using waste heat from internet and data centres to heat entire towns.

The increasingly large and numerous data centres that dot our landscape to accommodate the burgeoning demand for internet, and particularly AI, services pump out a lot of waste heat. The Finnish town of Mäntsälä plans on utilizing that heat with a district heating system that captures the heat and uses it to directly heat homes in the town.

What a neat solution, and how very Scandinavian!

Should we be worried about trans women in sports?

The issue of transgender women in sports keeps raising its head from time to time. My wife's personal trainer has been banging on to her about it for years now. Right wingers like Donald Trump and Danielle Smith raise the issue whenever they remember. (I'm not totally sure why it's mainly a right-wing issue.) JK Rowling continues to dismay her otherwise loyal following every now and then by bringing the matter up.

The latest blow-up occurred when Skate Canada, Canada's national skating body (and independent of the federal government), announced that it will stop holding major national and international events in the province of Alberta due to Alberta's recently-legislated ban on transgender women competing in women's sports in the province, as the ban contravenes Skate Canada's "national standards for safe and inclusive sports".

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who went to the lengths of using the notwithstanding clause to get her legislation passed (as it would otherwise have contravened the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms), of course shot back that she thought that Skate Canada's decision was "disgraceful" and that she expects "they will apologize and adjust their policies" once they realize the error of their ways. (As it happens, there are no upcoming national or international events scheduled to take place in Alberta anyway for the foreseeable future.) 

Smith also said that the decision was "offside with the international community, including the International Olympic Committee, which is moving in the same direction as Alberta". This is disingenuous, shall we charitably say, as is so much that Danielle Smith says. In fact, the IOC is just in the process of reviewing its position on female sports, and has made no pronouncements either way. Currently, it leaves specific rules to to the various international federations for individual sports, although there are rumours that it may be moving towards some kind of ban later next year. Whether that will be a blanket ban or something based on testosterone counts is not clear. The International Paralympic Committee, of course, will probably come to very different conclusions.

So, is this a real issue? Or is it just a straw man/woman, one that the right wing loves to mobilize every now and then to placate its more militant members? How many people does it affect anyway? Well, San Francisco's Office of Transgender Initiatives has produced its own handy summary of the situation. And yes, I know they have their own axe to grind, or at least their own confirmed views, but at least they are attempting to create some perspective on a very divisive issue.

First off, an estimated 1% of the US population identify as transgendered (more than I would have thought), and I assume a similar proportion in Canada and western Europe. Very few of them, though, have any interest in sport: 0.002% of college athletes are trans, and less than 0.001% of Olympians. This is a vanishingly small percentage to have engendered such a maelstrom of political attention. 

It certainly seems to have attracted significantly more attention than much more worrying and prevalent problems like sexual abuse of women in sport. It has also led to some unfortunate incidents like schoolkids in Florida and several other states being subjected to genital inspections.

It's not a new issue, either. Renee Richards, a trans woman, was competing in tennis back in the 1970s (she never actually won anything). Veronica Ivy became track cycling champion in 2018, although only for an advanced age bracket. Laurel Hubbard competed in Olympic weightlifting in 2020, but, despite all the media attention, she didn't win anything either.

There is also some confusion about cisgender athletes being accused of being transgendered. This is often due to high testosterone levels, but is sometimes just based on their rather masculine appearance. Perhaps the most famous is Caster Semenya, the successful South African middle distance runner who has won several World Championships and a gold medal in the 2016 Olympics. She is not transgender, though, she just has very high natural levels of testosterone, as some women do. In 2019, World Athletics required her to take medications to suppress her natural testosterone in order to compete (she refused, and sued World Athletics for discrimination). 

There are others: Imane Khelif, a cisgender female boxer from Algeria, who was accused of being transgender and hounded out of the sport; Dutee Chand, an Indian athlete who was excluded from selection for her butch appearance, despite not being trans; and at least five other African runners who were all withdrawn from their events for their high natural testosterone levels and/or their masculine appearance.

So, what does the evidence from scientific studies show us? 

A 2021 study in the journal Sports Medicine concluded that there is no scientific evidence to support policymakers' attempts to ban transgender women in sports. A 2024 study, partly funded by the IOC and published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that trans women have little physical advantage, and may actually have several disadvantages, when competing with cisgender women:

• Trans women performed worse than cis women in tests measuring lower body strength.
• Trans women performed worse than cis women in tests measuring lung function.
• Trans women had a higher body fat mass and a weaker hand grip strength than cis men.
• Trans women's bone density (linked to muscle strength) was about the same as that of cis women, not better.
• Trans women's hemoglobin profile (also a factor in athletic performance) was also about the same as that of cis women, not better.

All this to say that the issue of trans women in sports is probably much more about politics than it is about sports.

Gen Z protests coupled with social media is becoming a powerful force for change

The Gen Z protests across the developing world are becoming 2025's Arab Spring.

In a bunch of countries, from Nepal to the Philippines to Peru, Indonesia, Madagascar, Bulgaria and Morocco, young people have been leveraging social media to foment what can only be described as revolution. And very successful they have been too.

In Nepal, in response to government corruption, wealth inequality, and a clampdown on social media, young people took to the streets, organizing through platforms like Discord, Reddit, TikTok and Instagram. The protests turned violent after some poor decisions by security forces, but ultimately the social media ban was overturned, the unpopular prime minister resigned, and the young people got to choose his replacement through a poll on Discord (a popular gaming platform). Extraordinary scenes, indeed.

Just a few days later, young people in Madagascar protested against chronic water and power shortages, high unemployment, and underfunded universities. Once again, the protests turned violent and several people were killed. But, in the end, the unpopular president fled, and the military took control of the country. This may not play out quite so well for the protestors, but the power of young voices amplified by social media is undeniable.

Elsewhere, Gen Zers have been galvanized against different local problems - parliamentary salaries, corruption and a police crackdown in Indonesia; pension plans, extortion and crime in Peru; public services, unemployment and government spending decisions in Morocco; flood control projects and corruption in the Philippines; corruption, taxes and social services contributions in Bulgaria. But many of the protest strategies are similar, and many of them have even taken to using a common symbol - a pirate with a toothy grin and straw hat, taken from a Japanese manga series. 

The protests are a weird mix of the playful and the deadly earnest, but they have been undeniably effective. However, whether these young people know what they want now (as opposed to what they don't want from before) is an open question.

An embarrassing criticism by Canadian linguistics boffins

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is having his very own "SpellingGate". A group of Canadian linguistics professors and the editor-in-chief of the Canadian English Dictionary, who operate under the moniker Editors Canada, have written an open letter to Carney, taking him to task for his too-English and not-Canadian-enough spelling habits. Like Carney doesn't have enough on his plate right now...

The group takes issue with Carney's tendency to use some English spellings like "catalyse" (instead of the more usual Canadian spelling "catalyze") and "globalisation" (instead of "globalization"). They say it's "a matter of our national history, identity and pride", and that it "could lead to confusion about which spelling is Canadian". Carney spent seven years in the UK, working as the governor of the Bank of England, and "he obviously picked up some pretension while he was there".

"Pretensions"? Are they serious? Do these people have nothing better to do as the world goes to hell in a handbasket? 

They of all people should know that Canadian spelling is an illogical hybrid mishmash of British and American spelling, not some pure monolithic thing. We use some English spellings like "colour", and some American spellings like "analyze". It even varies across the country, with the East tending towards more English spellings and the West more American. 

And these esteemed professors are insisting that Carney - who, I'm pretty sure, is not the person who actually types out the budget document and PMO news releases - take the more American and less English route with words like "globalization" and "catalyze". How do they see that as "taking an 'elbows up' stance" in the face of American imperialism and trade disputes, as they claim?

The whole thing seems pretty poorly-conceived and badly-timed to me. They should be embarrassed.

Netanyahu tries to exploit Sydney massacre

The horrendous Hanukkah shooting in Sydney, Australia the other day deserves to be treated very carefully. Nerves are frayed and tensions are high. Yes, it seems to be a targeted act of terrorism by two Muslims on a Jewish group. Yes, they were driven by Islamic state ideology, but (like so many IS attacks) were essentially lone wolf actors. And yes, this is antisemitism; there seems little doubt of that.

But trust Benjamin Netanyahu to stir the flames higher and to milk the situation for his own political ends. No-one does that better than he. The Israeli Prime Minister blamed the episode squarely on the shoulders of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for having the temerity to formally recognize a Palestinian state. "Your call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on the antisemitic fire".

Exactly how this was supposed to have triggered such an atrocity was not explained. I have tried, and failed, to imagine his logic. But, of course, logic doesn't come into it. This is just Netanyahu doing his usual "everybody is antisemitic, but I can do no wrong" schtick. The man has no shame.

I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking that Netanyahu's own actions in his excessive and genocidal reaction to Hamas' terrorist attack is as likely as anything to have been the catalyst behind the cowardly Sydney massacre. But that is not the stuff of official public comments. (I don't count this blog, as next to no-one reads it.)

And can we also take a moment to register that the hero of the day, the man who singlehandedly disarmed the gunman and probably saved many lives, was Ahmed al-Ahmed, a 43-year old fruit shop owner and an Australian Muslim son of refugees from Syria. I'm not suggesting that his actions somehow cancel out the actions of the two Muslim gunmen, but credit where credit is due. Not all Muslims are crazy, violent extremists.

One story among many about immigrants in the USA

I'm sure everyone has read more than they want or need about the immigration clampdown in the USA. I've certainly written more than I want or need about it. But this particular story on the BBC News website was especially poignant, I thought.

A woman, originally from Iran, moved to the US a decade ago. She is currently living with her husband (a US citizen) in Oregon. She has gone through all the right channels, step by step, and passed all the various tests, approvals and security vetting for citizenship. She was two days away from her naturalization ceremony, which would officially make her a US citizen.

That was the point where the Trump government, in its wisdom, summarily cancelled the oath-taking ceremony, with no explanation or apology. It turns out that the only reason for the cancellation is the woman's Iranian origins. America is cancelling the citizenship ceremonies of all immigrants hailing from any of the 19 (mainly Muslim) countries that are already subject to a travel ban in the USA.

The woman is, understandably, distraught. Not only is she not a US citizen, but she is now in the position of considering moving back to Iran, a country she feels little or no connection with, despite being married to a US citizen, having spent a decade or so in the country, and having jumped through all the required hoops.

And hers is far from the only such story.

The world's coldest capital cities

We're going to be visiting Mongolia next summer - pleasure not business :) - and I thought I remember reading somewhere that the capital city, Ulaanbaatar (sometimes written as Ulan Bator), was the coldest capital city in the world. Knowing how cold Ottawa can be, I thought I would look it up, and it turns out the comparison is not even close.

Ulaanbaatar is indeed the coldest capital city in the world, followed by Astana (Kazakhstan), Moscow (Russia), Helsinki (Finland), Reykjavik (Iceland), and Tallin (Estonia). Ottawa (Canada) is only the seventh coldest capital, which is certainly food for thought.

Ulaanbaatar - which sits at 1,350m above sea level, so that's kind if cheating :) - has an average year-round temperate below zero (-1.5°C). Although temperatures during its short summer (when we will be there) are quite pleasant - in the 20s - winter temperatures in January are in the -36°C to -40°C range. Ouch!

I wonder if they mollify themselves by saying "it's a dry cold" like we do here?

Should Canadians be worried about travelling to the USA

Many Canadians are in a mild panic over the "new" border requirements when crossing to the USA. US Customs and Border Protection say that travellers from countries that don't need a visa - which (for now, at least) includes Canadians - may be required to show five years worth of social media information to border agents before they are allowed in to Fortress America. This will apply to touristic heavy hitters like Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, as well as Canada.  The (unstated) assumption is that, if anything scurrilous is discovered - say, God forbid, a less-than-copacetic reference to Donald Trump - the travellers may be denied entry.

Thing is, this is not really a new policy. People who do need a visa (e.g. Chinese/Indian/etc visitors) have been subject to that for years, when they apply in advance for their visas. Even those visa-free visitors, like Canadians, could have been subject to such an online search any time in the last 20 years or so. In practice, though, it is extremely rare that such a search would be triggered, and you would have to be very suspicious in a whole bunch of other ways before it was.

Well, even with the new edict, the same applies. According to immigration experts, most people should just swan through customs and passport control as usual, with only the normal disapproving stares and snide comments of the border agent to bear. Only if you are otherwise suspect in some way would you be yanked off into secondary screening and potentially subjected to social media assessment. Of course, that "suspect" description applies to many more people nowadays than it used to, but we are assured that the "new" rules are not in fact new, they are just more likely to be strictly applied.

And, in case you were thinking about it, don't try and wipe your social media accounts from your phone before travelling, or travel with a clean, disposable "burner" phone. If there's one thing that will make you look suspicious, and raise a glaring red flag, that is it.

As for me, I have no intentions of travelling to the US any time soon, despite having a sister-in-law in New York, whom we regularly used to visit. Which is probably just as well, because I don't have any social media accounts. I haven't had Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok or anything else of that ilk, for decades now, and certainly nothing really suspicious like BlueSky or Mastodon. Truth Social? Uh, no. I guess I do use WhatsApp to communicate with family, and there is probably some defamatory stuff on there. And if they were to find this blog - is this "social media"? - I would be well and truly sunk.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see whether this policy discourages tourists travelling to the USA, as many commentators are predicting - and you have to think that it will - and whether that benefits Canada's tourism trade. 

UPDATE

Whatever the deal with social media, Canadians can expect to be photographed when entering and leaving the US as of 26 December 2025, and possibly finger-printed too. It's looking less and less appealing, wouldn't you say?

US senator endorses the use of bleach as magical cure

Good news! There's a simple and cheap chemical that can cure cancer, malaria, autism and COVID-19!

It's called chlorine dioxide, a chemical usually used for disinfecting and bleaching. It is routinely employed by food processing plants and hospitals for sanitizing surfaces and equipment, and by paper mills for whitening wood pulp. People who use it work in well-ventilated spaces and wear protective gloves. Even small concentrations in drinking water can be harmful to children and pregnant women (as even the EPA cautions). But, we are told, this same chemical has almost magical curative properties!

If you are thinking that this sounds very much like Donald Trump's pandemic-era cure for COVID - regular, everyday bleach - you'd be right. But this is the startling conclusion of a book called "The War on Chlorine Dioxide: The Medicine That Could End Medicine" by Dr. Pierre Kory. 

Unfortunately, Dr. Kory, who worked for years in Wisconsin hospitals, is no longer a doctor, having been struck off the medical register for promoting these very claims. However, that doesn't stop MAGA Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin from publicly endorsing Dr. Kory's work. Johnson has propounded various conspiracy theories and misinformation on vaccines and COVID over the years. In his recent endorsement of Kory's book, he is clearly convinced that there is a globally-coordinated cover-up against the medical uses of chlorine dioxide by health agencies, drug companies and the media. Kory describes this dastardly cover-up in his book, including assassination attempts on doctors who have tried to release the truth about the miracle drug/bleaching agent.

I imagine that the current US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., would very much approve of Senator Johnson's stance.

The USA is a prime example of competitive authoritarianism

We routinely talk about America sliding into authoritarianism these days. It seems to be a done deal, with little anyone can do to check it. After all, Trump was legally and democratically elected, even if most of his supporters really should have seen where this was headed long before election day. But, bafflingly, most of them still seem pretty happy with the way things are going. Many Americans WANT an authoritarian government, it seems.

But, however much we may kvetch about it, this is not the same deal as Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia (not yet anyway). A thoughtful and deep article on the Foreign Affairs website introduced me to the concept of "competitive authoritarianism", which sounds like an oxymoron, but which actually describes pretty well what is going on here.

Competitive authoritarianism is "a system in which parties compete in elections, but where incumbents routinely abuse their power to punish critics and tilt the playing field against their opposition". It's what we see happening in Chávez and Maduro's Venezuela, Bukele's El Salvador, Erdogen's Turkey, Orban's Hungary, and Modi's India. (Russia and China are a little further along the continuum to full-scale dictatorships.)

The USA under Trump is just such a competitive authoritarian country. Arguably it's democratic decline has proceeded faster (and less subtly) than any of the other examples given. However, that does not mean that the slide is irreversible. Democratic channels still exist whereby Trump's slide can be checked and even reversed. Recent Democrat Party gains in by-elections indicate that all is not lost, although the 2026 mid-terms will be the litmus test. 

It requires the American public to recognize the twin dangers of complacency and fatalism, but the authors of this article, at any rate, believe that this will happen.

Bloc's opposition to religious exemption for hate speech makes sense

It's not that often that I agree with much that the Bloc Québécois says, but the Bloc's amendment to the Liberals' Bill C-9 (the Combatting Hate Act") does make some good sense.

Bill C-9 promises to clamp down on hate speech and make hate-motivated crimes a specific offence. But the Liberals' original formulation allowed the current criminal code's religious exemption to continue. This specifies that something that would otherwise qualify as hate speech can be allowed, "if, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text". 

So, religion can be used as a cover for homophobia, antisemitism, anti-Islamism, you name it, so long as it appears to come from religious convictions or an interpretation, however tenuous, of a religious text.

As the Bloc Québécois points out, such an exemption makes a self-defeating mockery of the law, allowing for all sorts of hateful utterances provided the perpetrator claims it is part of their religious beliefs, and the Bloc refused to support the government unless the religious exemption was removed. The Liberals need the Bloc's votes to pass the legislation, so they have agreed to remove the offending clause. The Conservatives, predictably enough, continue to insist that the religious exemption is just fine.

Some of the Bloc Québécois' strident views on secularism are a bit too strong for me, a confirmed atheist. (For example, the recent ban on religious garb and symbols for public sector workers.) But this one seems sensible enough.

Art and cobblers

I've been quite enjoying the page 2 item in the print version of the Globe and Mail newspaper in recent months, where they feature painting and other artwork form various Canadian art galleries.

Today's showcases a painting by Ukrainian-Canadian William Kurelek called Lumberjack's Breakfast. 

What do you see as the dominant colours in this picture? Brown? Green, maybe?

The blurb that goes with the picture in the Globe says, "His use of blue and yellow, echoing the Ukrainian flag, subtly affirms the artist's cultural identity". 

Yes, there's a little bit of blue, but almost no yellow. Which subtly affirms my own observation that there's an awful lot of cobblers talked about art.

Why did Trump pardon a Honduran narco-trafficker and dictator?

A great many people are having a hard time understanding the logic of Donald Trump's official pardon for ex-Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández.

Hernandez is serving a 45-year sentence in the high security USP Hazelton prison in West Virginia for his role in trafficking some 400 tons of cocaine into the USA. No-one is quite sure why Trump has pardoned him, given his administration's supposed strong anti-drugs stance (think bombing Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean, punitive tariffs against Canada for its supposed role in the US fentanyl trade, etc).

Even members of his own party are questioning the action: "Why would we pardon this guy and then go after Maduro for running drugs into the United States?" (Republican Senator Bill Cassidy).

Perfectly good question, with no good answer. The best we can do is to assume that the pardon was Trump's attempt to meddle in the ongoing election in Honduras, in which Trump would prefer to see the right-wing National Party candidate triumph (Hernández's old party). That, and he would, of course, like to be seen as doing the exact opposite of whatever the Biden administration did (Hernández was tried and convicted by Biden's Justice Department).

It's not a very convincing explanation, although why we are still looking for logic and sense in Trump's decisions is beyond me. Maybe he just wants to sow doubt in people's minds about the whole US legal system, which is still attacking Trump on several fronts. Who knows what the guy is thinking?

How do we claw a way back to common sense and respectability after Trump?

Donald Trump, and his administration of amoral lackeys and yes-men, will probably be remembered by history for the big things he got wrong, from upending global free trade, to rolling back environmental protections in favour of the oil and gas industry, to repudiating and reversing the immigration that helped make the country great in the first place, to the flagrant disdain for human rights and international norms, to the concentration of executive power to accommodate the whims and obsessions of one man at the expense of the congressional system that has served the country for two and a half centuries. 

Of course, this list can be extended and expanded. What counts as egregious has undergone a stark re-definition during Trump's second term, so extensive and all-encompassing are the man's sins. Perhaps the single most important change he has wrought is the normalization of personal insults, crudity, lying and nepotism in the political sphere.

What might get lost in that larger history, though, are the smaller things that Trump brings to bear almost every single day. It seems like nothing is too small for his overbearing attention. In some ways, you have to admire the attention to detail and the sheer single-mindedness of the man, although we must still remember to stand back and look at the actual import of his attentions, lest we too become caught up in his personalty cult.

Most days, there is a social media posting (or 10!), a press release, or an executive order that just gets lost amid all the vileness and atrocity emanating from the White House in what now passes for the "normal" course of business in the USA. 

Whether it is redistricting congressional boundaries for party political gain, or weaponizing the Justice Department to get back at perceived enemies, or the gratuitous extra-juducial killing of purported drug carriers, actions that would have been considered outrageous and politically unconscionable just a few short years ago are now coming thick and fast. Browbeating countries into disadvantageous trade and investment agreements, changing the names and briefs of entire government departments, co-opting public institutions for personal gains and aggrandisement, issuing pardons to convicted criminals on purely political grounds, freezing all asylum applications and making it more difficult for anyone to enter the country (even legally), embracing dictators shunned by the rest of the civilized world, blatant interference in the running of private-sector companies, the abandonment of any and all diversity initiatives, the "purging and packing" of state institutions from the Supreme Court down, deliberately lying about vaccine and other healthcare claims ... there seems to be no end to the depths Trump is willing to plumb.

Is anyone actually keeping track of everything that needs to be reversed in order to bring America back to normality and international standards? Whoever follows Trump - and we have to believe that this too shall pass one day, and that a majority of Americans will eventually wake up from their delusions - whoever follows Trump will have the unenviable task of methodically undoing all the harms that have been perpetrated by the Trump administration. As things stand, it's hard to see that ever happening.

And we also have to hope that the demons of back-door fascism and extreme populism that Trump's actions have allowed to take hold, and become normalized, across the world also die with him. Otherwise, we are are in for one ugly 21st century.

Trump's targeting of Venezuelan boats not likely to save any Americans from anything

America's crusade against drug-trafficking Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean is completely off-target.

US claims, that the Venezuelan boats targeted by the USA were involved in transporting fentanyl from South America to the US, flies in the face of all available evidence, which shows that the drug trade through the Caribbean is almost all in cocaine, not fentanyl, and that the cocaine is destined for Europe, not America. US-bound fentanyl almost all comes in from Mexico, not Canada, as Trump also claims, and certainly not through the Caribbean, and most of America's cocaine comes in through the Pacific.

President Trump and various members of his administration, as well as key spokespeople from the Pentagon (which is now largely staffed by loyal Trump supporters, and not necessarily experts in their field), have been loud in their claims that US strikes on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean, of which there have been at least 20 in the last few months, are essential to break up drug flows into the US and to protect the drug-addled American population. Trump has claimed (without evidence, as per usual) that each boat bombed saves 25,000 American lives, which is just ludicrous.

It is more and more apparent that this is just a pretext for Trump's regime-change aspirations, and his desperate need to be seen to be doing something - anything - about America's drug problem.

The Trump regime has come under more and more criticism by allies for its activities int he Caribbean, which increasingly look to be against both US and international law. Some allies are even witholding intelligence on Latin American drug smuggling operational from the USA, as they are worried about the illegality of America's policy.

FIFA boss pleases Trump with his very own peace prize

The FIFA World Cup draw in Washington was the rather bizarre occasion for the presentation of the brand-new FIFA Peace Prize. 

The what, you say? FIFA is in the business of awarding prizes for world peace? I thought they were all about football? Good questions all.

It turns out that Gianni Infantino, the Swiss-Italian current boss of FIFA, is best buddies with Donald Trump, although nobody really knows why. From Trump's inauguration to the recent Club World Cup final to the signing of the supposed "peace deal" between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Infantino keeps popping up, Waldo-like, in Trump's environs, sometimes in the most unlikely circumstances.

Infantino's "style" was all over the the glitzy World Cup draw event. Trump's favourite entertainers, The Village People and Andrea Bocelli, were there too, as were a bunch of other actors, models and assorted hangers-on. There was much mutual back-slapping between Trump and Infantino, and some embarrassing one-sided abasement. Infantino even promised Trump "the support of the entire football community", which seemed a bit rich.

Even given all this, it was nevertheless a very strange moment when Infantino hijacked the lottery draw event, full of soccer personalities and sports talk, to present Trump with a cheap imitation peace prize, à propos of nothing at all. Given that it is very unlikely that Trump will ever earn the Nobel Prize, given his predilection for war, Infantino presumably felt sorry for him and thought he should have his very own peace prize. And it was just that: a prize created expressly for Trump and no-one else. No-one else on the 37-member FIFA Council seemed to know anything about it.

The President, though, was clearly deeply touched by all this nonsense. And, in one fell swoop, Infantino firmly positioned himself as Trump's bestie, even rivalling fallen Canadian Great One, Wayne Gretzky. It is hard to make this stuff up, isn't it?

Any "understanding" between the governments of Canada and Alberta will be hard won

A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Liberal government of Canada and the United Conservative government of Alberta was never going be an easy thing. There is very little common ground between the Liberals and Danielle Smith's United Conservative Party, although Prime Minister Mark Carney is in the process of dragging the Liberals much further to the right in his determination to kick-start Canada's economy, for example by avoiding awkward environmental reviews and such like.

There was lots of talk about "hinge moments" and "inflection points" and other such trendy buzzwords, and Carney and Smith were like a couple of giggling schoolkids at the official signing ceremony. However, the agreement may not actually be worth the paper it was written on.

This so-called "grand bargain" involves Ottawa giving the green light to a new pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific, a major sop to a fractious and trigger-happy Alberta. The only stipulations for Alberta are rather vague ones about pursuing carbon capture technology, stricter industrial carbon pricing rules, and of course getting the buy-in of British Columbia and First Nations, through whose territory the pipeline would run (which will not be easy, if indeed it is even possible). 

Carney is still insisting that it will all happen in a spirit of "cooperative federalism", in which "all stakeholders have to agree", including the province of British Columbia and several affected First Nations, but that seems naïve to me. He also seems to think that Alberta can still achieve its greenhouse gas emissions targets by 2050, apparently not realizing that Alberta has no intentions of chasing any such target.

Quite how Mr. Carney hopes to achieve this feat is not clear, and a lot of other people are equally skeptical. Many British Columbia Liberal MPs and their constituents are strongly opposed to the proposed carve-out of environmental protections for the ecologically-sensitive North West coast. Many First Nations rights holders are strongly opposed to a pipeline through their territory, and the transportation of oil through the pristine fjords and inlets of the BC coast. The exemption of Alberta from Canada's Clean Electricity Regulations has also raised the hackles of other provinces.

All this has driven a substantial wedge within the Liberal Party, because there are still many MPs in the Liberal caucus from the old environmentalist days of Justin Trudeau, including some MPs like Steven Guilbeault that were instrumental in drawing up some of the key environmental legislation that Carney is apparently now all too happy to trample over.

There have been some rather testy discussions between the Prime Minister's Office and Liberal MPs like Mr. Guilbeault and others, and particularly with many of the British Columbia Liberal MPs, who are having to explain this volte face to their electorate. BC Premier David Eby, whose province was inexplicably not included in talks, remains implacably opposed to it, particularly over the prospect of the federal government using its recently acquired power to grant exemptions to the current BC oil tanker ban. The Union of BC Indian Chiefs, as well as various individual Indigenous groups, issued a strong statement indicating their continued opposition to such a pipeline.

Carney and Smith are publicly portrating this as a done deal, even though no "private proponent" has yet shown any willingness to take on such a contentious project, and even though there are loud rumblings of discontent within the Liberal Party itself. Maybe Mr. Carney sees this as a way to reset fractured federal-provincial relations but, in attempting a rapprochement with Alberta, he has alienated other provinces, mainly BC and Quebec (which issued its own statement about how iniqutious it finds the Alberta deal, calling it the day Canada's commitment to climate action died).

So, is Mr. Carney just being naïve and idealistic by putting such a great emphasis on this deal with Alberta? What value is any kind of understanding between Alberta and the federal government if there is no chance of projects going forward, and if two of the major parties involved - British Columbia and First Nations -  were not even included in the negotiations.  He is normally a very pragmatic man, but in this case he seems to have let his heart rule in his head. 

Or maybe it's all just political theatre? Is Carney only pretending to want a new pipeline, as some have suggested. Either way, this is a vague promise not a practical plan, and promises can be broken or just fall by the wayside. The reality is: a pipeline to the BC coast seems no closer to reality than it was before the MOU, and Mr. Carney may have damaged relations with other provinces, and even his own caucus, in the process.

UPDATE

It's probably no surprise, but Steven Guilbeault, a lifelong environmental advocate, has resigned from the Liberal Cabinet over the Alberta deal. He will continue to represent his Montreal riding, but will no longer serve in Cabinet as Minster of Canadian Identity and Culture. 

There seems to be an irreparable rift between Carney snd Gilbeault over the environmental repercussions of the Alberta MOU. Kudos to Mr. Guilbeault for having the guts to stand up for his principles. Carney, once a stand-out apologist for climate action financing, seems to have drunk the Trump Cool-aid and gone all-in on fossil fuels and abandoned his old zeal for sustainable clean energy. You can see why Guilbeault reached the end of his tether.

Exposing false claims of native heritage is surely counter-productive

The latest Indigenous Canadian to be outed as not being Indigenous at all is successful author Thomas King.

California-born King, who has lived in Camada since the early 1980s, seems to have honestly believed all his life that he was of Cherokee ancestry. But he was recently presented with genealogical evidence to the contrary, a finding that has profoundly shocked and depressed the 82-year old author of popular books like Indians on Vacation and The Inconvenient Indian. He has withdrawn the publication of his next novel, due out in May 2026, and his whole life and legacy is in disarray after the revelations.

He was outed by a "whistle-blowing organization" called the Tribal Alliance Against Frauds, based in North Carolina. The organization exists, it seems, to expose false claims of Native heritage in America and Canada. Because - just like with Joseph Boyden, Buffy Sainte Marie and Michelle Latimer, before King - they wouldn't want people thinking that these successful artists and personalities, who have spent most of their lives trying to promote and boost Indigenous peoples, were Indigenous, would they?

I'm sure, where the Tribal Alliance Against Frauds and similar groups are concerned, there is a matter of principle involved here, even if that principle is exclusionary and bigoted and a bit fanatical. But I can't help but think that they are cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

UPDATE

And here we go: Vancouver School Board is pulling King's books from its school curriculum and libraries because, after all, he doesn't have any American Indian heritage, does he? I'm sure many others will follow. The usual argument is trotted out, that celebrating King/Boyden/ Sainte-Marie/etc is somehow "taking space away" from real Indigenous authors and performers (who are presumably not as good, otherwise they would have made it big anyway, especially given the built-in "authenticity bonus" that Native artists enjoy these days).

So, what's the message here? That the only reason Thomas King's books are so enjoyed and revered is because he is Indigenous? That all those prizes that were bestowed were only for the accident of his birth, not for his literary and story-telling chops? Ridiculous! At this rate, Indigenous people will have no role models left.

US "peace plan" for Ukraine is a complete sell-out to Russia

The United States has come up with a 28-point "peace plan" for Ukraine, which is suspiciously similar to Russia's surrender offer from over 2 years ago. In fact, there are suggestions that it was literally authored by Russia and handed over to the US to push through. The plan was hatched by US "special envoy" Steve Witkoff (actually a property developer) and Russia's "special envoy" Kirill Dmitriev (actually a Moscow businessman, often described as "ruthlessly ambitious"); Ukraine was not asked to contribute.

Some US senators are saying that this is nothing like the US's agreed plans for Ukraine, and that Trump is just pushing any old thing to get any sort of "peace", even if it favours the aggressor, just like his plan for Gaza. Trump still wants that elusive Nobel Peace prize, at almost any cost. He is trying to get it by bullying and blackmailing Ukraine into a disastrous "peace" by threatening to withhold American arms and other assistance in this illegal war.

Roughly, the Trump-Witkoff plan involves:

• Official US recognition of Russia's hold on Crimea and the whole of the Donbas region, including parts that they do not even hold militarily after two-and-a half years of war, plus those parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions it currently holds.
• Russia rejoining the G7 group, from which they were ejected after the annexation of Crimea.
• Full amnesty for Russian war crimes throughout the war, and a dropping of the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for Putin on war crimes charges.
• The capping of Ukraine's military at a level much lower than currently (so that they are less able to respond to future Russian incursions?)
• A vague promise of a family reunification plan for the thousands of Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia during the war.
• The lifting of restrictions on Russian television channels in Ukraine, and on the influential Russian Orthodox Church.
• Prohibiting Ukraine from joining NATO.

(Here's a more comprehensive list of the provisions.)

Does Ukraine get anything from this deal? Some ill-defined "reliable security guarantees" from the US, is about all. And would you trust the Trump administration on that?

If you thought that Trump's bromance with Putin was over, you might want to think again: this is another love letter to Putin. It is a  veritable rubber-stamping of Russia's wish list with regard to Ukraine. It is a much worse deal for Ukraine than any previous offers, and the pressure to accept is ramped up. Ukraine is left with a stark choice: accept a deal that looks very much like total surrender, or continue to fight a war it is slowly losing.

And the timing? Deliberately to take advantage of a corruption scandal in Zelensky's inner circle, that puts Zelensky on the defensive, and makes his acceptance of any old deal more likely (although still very unlikely - if he were to sell Ukraine out to Trump's deal, his presidency is toast).