Friday, February 14, 2025

Trump's idea of a "deal" for Ukraine is the ultimate in arrogance

As usual, Donald Trump just doesn't get it, living as he does on a complete different planet from the rest of us.

Inserting himself into yet another situation where he's not really wanted, Trump is "making deals" with global pariah, Vladimir Putin, presenting a peace plan for the 3-year old war in Ukraine without even involving Ukraine (or Europe).

Trump is desperate to earn himself the Nobel Peace Prize, and his simplistic conception of brokering peace is to offer his buddy Putin whatever he wants, Ukraine be damned. So, as far as he is concerned, Russia can keep the Donbas and anything else they might have illegally annexed, and he is quite happy to conclude a deal - on behalf of Ukraine - assuring that Ukraine will never join NATO (another of Putin's stipulations), which would be the only thing standing between Ukraine and another invasion by Russia a few years down the road, to finish the job once and for all.

Trump doesn't care about Ukraine, nor does he care about morality or  "doing the right thing". That is not who he is. All he cares about is his legacy and what makes money for the USA. With gob-smacking cynicism, he is tying further support for Ukraine to American access to Ukrainian rare earth minerals. He blithely deadpans, "They may be Russian someday or they may not be Russian someday". His scorn and arrogance knows no bounds.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy is being understandably carefully in his public remarks about Trump, buy he must be seething inside. Europe is, perhaps rashly, being less careful in its language, using phrases like "dictated peace", "appeasement" and "dirty deal". Trump has already made clear that he is not willing to bankroll Ukraine further, and has even indicated that Europe can no longer rely on the USA's help with its own security. Let's hope it doesn't get any worse.

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Where the far right wing hangs out

The Globe and Mail's Guide to Trumpism's Online Universe (or Donald Trump's Social Spheres, as the online version of the article title inexplicably gets re-translated) is an eye-opening introduction to America's  right-wing media landscape and its most important social platforms. Eye-opening not least becuase I've never even heard of some of them (perhaps not that surprising given that I'm 65, British-Canadian, and my politics swing left to green). 

The big five platforms favoured by Trump and his supporters are:

  • Truth Social - launched by Trump in 2022 after he was expelled from Twitter (remember Twitter?), this is where Trump and VP JD Vance make most of their announcements. Its power users include Sean Hannity, Charlie Kirk, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jack Posibiek, and is the regular hang-out for aspiring right-wing politicians and the alt-right media, which then disseminate the posts across the Internet as a whole. There are no guard rails and pretty much anything goes. Monthly users, though, only number 4.68 million, paltry compared to many other platforms.
  • X - once called Twitter, until Elon Musk bought it in 2022, rolled back monitoring and moderation, and reinstated myriad accounts that had been suspended due to policy and hate-speech violations, including those of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and conspiracy theorists. Now, it's the go-to platform for those people and for Musk himself, especially given that it has 425 million monthly users. Democrats have abandoned X in droves, and Republican users are now in a strong majority. Offensive memes and AI deepfakes abound, with few to no boundaries or moderation.
  • Kick - a Twitch copy with much looser moderation policies around hate speech, harassment and sexual content (Twitch, if you're not familiar, is a video platform for 20-something video game players). Adin Ross, banned from Twitch for his hateful slurs, is the platform's guru, and gaming is only an excuse for rants by white supremacists, racists and misogynists (including Nick Fuentes, Andrew Rate, Vivek Ramaswamy and Trump himself). Monthly users number a mind-boggling 12.5 million.
  • YouTube - by far the most popular platform, with 1.7 billion monthly users, frequented by the left and right alike, but its algorithm has been shown to (intentionally or not) drive viewers from more mainstream content to content promoting radical and violent ideas. It is considered a major vehicle for "red-pilling" (converting people to far-right beliefs). "Manosphere" luminaries like Joe Rogan, the Nelk Boys, Logan and Jake Paul and Theo Von are among the most influential right-wing players with YouTube channels.
  • Rumble - A Canadian-made YouTube alternative, started in 2013, which has been particularly embraced by far right influencers and others who were kicked off YouTube for violating platform rules, including Russell Brand, Dan Bongino, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Steven Crowder and Donald Trump Jr. Here you can see endless videos on pseudo-science, conspiracy theories, paramilitary groups and general alt-right politics, along with 12.6 other monthly users (and growing).

There are many others, even less well-known including Gab, Parler, Gettr. None of them have any serious moderation (which is, of course, considered woke, liberal, mollycoddling interference), so anything goes - and indeed, is encouraged - including deepfakes, offensive memes, and outright hatespeech. 

The left has nothing like this network. BlueSky may be the closest thing, but it is merely a more heavily-moderated version of X, to which many on the left have decamped in order to escape the toxicity of current-day X. It is not pro-left as such, merely a platform trying to maintain some objectivity and truth. It does not allow the kind of showmanship and outright lies the pro-right outlets do. With this unfair advantage, it's hardly surprising that the far right is in the ascendance at the moment.

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Do Americans approve of what Trump is doing?

From what I hear and read, most people outside of the USA think that Donald Trump is an idiot, and that his slash and burn approach to politics since his election, both nationally and internationally, has been nothing short of disastrous. But what do Americans think of the show so far?

A CBS News poll suggests that they're actually pretty happy, generally speaking, with a few provisos. Which gives a good (if scary) indication of where the American people's heads are right now.

70% think he is doing exactly what he promised in his election campaign, and they're probably not far wrong there. But 53% give him an overall approval rating, compared to 47% who disapprove, which is actually more than the margin in the popular vote ofnthe election (49.8% to 48.3%). People find him tough, energetic, focussed and effective (they're probably not wrong their either, much as I wish they were).

On more specific issues, 59% approve of his program to deport illegal immigrants, and 64% approve of his sending troops to the Mexican border, although 52% disapprove of large detention centres for deportees. Amazingly, 54% approve of his handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict, although only 13% think that the US taking over Gaza is a good idea, compared to 47% who think it is a bad idea (again amazingly, 40% are not sure!)

His single biggest failing in the eyes of the US population is in his inability to lower prices, although why anyone would have thought that was possible, I'm not sure. 66% think he is not doing enough on that front, which was a major part of his election platform. 

And those tariffs? Well, 56% favour tariffs on China, but there is much less enthusiasm for tariffs on America's allies: 44% favour tariffs on Mexico (56% are against them), 40% on Europe (60% against), and 38% on Canada (62% against). Which makes me feel very, very slightly better...

Elon Musk's role in the government is not very popular either. Just 23% think he should have a lot of influence over government operations and spending (which is what he seems to have), 28% some influence, 18% not much influence, and 30% no influence at all. The Republican-Democrat breakdown of that vote is even more stark than with most of the others; he is a very polarizing guy.

All in all, a mixed bag, but a surprisingly positive reception for some of the wacky stunts Trump has been pulling during his first month of power. I had hoped for a general uprising of the people - not going to happen.

Monday, February 10, 2025

Drake-Lamar beef is bewildering

Full disclosure, I'm not a huge fan of either Drake or Kendrick Lamar (or of rap in general, tbh). But I'm still a bit bemused by all the fuss over this ongoing "beef" between them, which became even more public after Lamar's star billing at this year's Super Bowl and his performance of the song Not Like Us.

Probably the two biggest rap stars in the world right now, they have been "dissing" each other for years now, but it came to a head with Lamar's allegations (originally veiled, later fully-realized) that Drake has had sexual relations with underage fans, and maybe even has a young girlfriend hidden away somewhere. 

"Say, Drake, I hear you like 'em young ... Tryna strike a chord and I hear it's A Minor ... Certified Lover Boy? Certified pedophiles". It doesn't get much more in-your-face than that. 

Drake has responded with his own diss tracks against Lamar, and most recently by suing Lamar's record label for releasing Not Like Us, which of course has only met with ridicule from the macho hip-hop crowd.

But hold on, what evidence has Lamar for his allegations, in verse and otherwise? Drake has challenged him to reveal his proof, to no avail. I've read several articles on the subject, and nowhere have I seen any kind of proof being offered. Maybe it has to go to court before such minor details need to be addressed?

It's not clear to me exactly what you can say in a song, and avoid being accused of slander and libel. But surely you can't go around accusing people of being pedophiles and expect to get away with it? Can you?

It seems to me that this whole diss thing is just a way of selling more music and making more money (not that either of them need it!) Not Like Us saw a 430% increase in streams after the Super Bowl half-time show, reaching a billion streams on Spotify alone.

There are also allegations (also as yet unproven) that Lamar's song streams, particularly of Not Like Us, have been artificially inflated by the likes of Spotify and Universal Music Group. The whole thing looks very sordid.  Maybe they just have nothing better to do than exercise their inflated egos.

Friday, February 07, 2025

Governor General has some explaining to do regarding Buffy Sainte-Marie's cancellation

Buffy Sainte-Marie has had her Order of Canada revoked ("terminated" seems to be the official description; "scrapped" is what it actually is), because some people think she is just not Indigenous enough. She has been officially and summarily cancelled and is now persona non grata.

As I have commented on before, a CBC Fifth Estate documentary about a year ago (whose findings were contested) found some documents that contradicted some of Ms. Sainte-Marie's claims of Indigenous ancestry. Many (but by no means all) Indigenous people were outraged, and called for her to be punished. And so now, a year later, we have this.

Except it doesn't really make much sense to me. See, the thing is, she was given the prestigious award of the Order of Canada back in 1997 for her decades of activism in support of First Nations and Métis, and for raising awareness of political and social issues as they affect Indigenous people. That hasn't changed. Her decades of work are as valuable and influential now as they were in 1997. So, why revoke ("terminate") her Order of Canada?

Well, because some people - mainly Indigenous people, the very people whom Ms. Sainte-Marie helped and paved the way for - have campaigned tirelessly to have her honour removed. No official reason was given by the Office of the Secretary of the Governor General for her removal, but the usual justifications are a criminal conviction or "conduct that may undermine the integrity of the order". She hasn't been convicted of anything, so I guess it must be the latter.

But, in my humble opinion as a mere settler, it is the Office of the Governor General itself (and perhaps Mary Simon, Canada's first Indigenous Governor General - her personal role in this has yet to be made clear) that has undermined its own integrity by this action. I don't think we have heard the last of this.

Mark Carney has injected some life (and hope) into Liberal chances

Well, this is heartening. A new poll about which Canadian politicians would be best at dealing with Donald Trump, puts Mark Carney streets ahead.

It's not that I'm a huge fan of the Liberals. But I am a huge anti-fan of the Conservatives, particularly the current incarnation under Pierre Poilievre, who I see as the most dangerous and destabilizing force in Canadian politics in many a year.

Asked "Which of the following politicians would do the best job at negotiating with President Trump", 40% responded Mark Carney, 26% Pierre Poilievre, 13% Chrystia Freeland, and 1% Karina Gould (the rest being either unsure or think it would make no difference). 

That's a surprise considering how untested and inexperienced Carney is in national and international politics. No-one doubts that he is a smart cookie and more than able to carry an argument, but is he battle-hardened enough?

The size of this advantage gives me some hope that Poilievre may not be a slam dunk for the federal election which is expected later this spring. I may have to hold my nose to vote Liberal, but I'll do it to keep Poilievre's hands off power.

Wednesday, February 05, 2025

When is progress not really progress?

I'm currently manfully ploughing my way through Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. Subtitled A Brief History of Humankind, it's a thick tome of anthropology and evolutionary psychology, a tour de force of grand scope that attempts nothing less than a critical summary of the whole of human history (and prehistory).

It's full of fascinating observations and surprising conclusions (and I'm less than a quarter of the way through!) It is written in an engaging, no-nonsense style, albeit with the weight of copious analysis and academic research behind it.

Just to take one example, starting about 10,000-11,000 years ago, humankind across the world started gradually moving away from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a more settled agricultural life, cultivating a much more limited number of crops and animals. This was the so-alled Agricultural Revolution, usually considered one of the most important steps in human progress, and a great leap forward in our development.

Harari, however, calls it "History's Biggest Fraud". He argues that the Agricultural Revolution was not evidence of humanity's increasing intelligence, not was it the renunciation of a gruelling, dangerous hunter-gatherer lifestyle in favour of a pleasanter, easy-living, bucolic life of farming.

Rather, the new farmers typically had an even harder life than before: backbreaking work clearing fields, weeding, building fences, guarding against pests, watering, collecting animal faeces to nourish the soil, etc, etc. Yes, it allowed for greater food production, albeit of a much more limited and less healthy variety of foods, and the improved food supply and settled homes allowed for more babies to be born. But more babies needed more food, and babies were fed cereals rather than breast-milk to allow the mothers to work more, reducing their immune systems, and leading to many more infant deaths.

It doesn't end there. If the staple crop failed due to an infestation or bad weather, peasants died by the thousands. Tribe-against-tribe violence increased, as the best agricultural land was fought over tooth and nail. Infections and diseases flourished in the busier, closer, more enclosed living quarters. Forests were cleared to make room for mono-culture plantings, a process still going on today. Once free-roaming animals were domesticated, penned, whipped, harnessed, even mutilated and tortured, before being unceremoniously slaughtered at a young age, all in the interests of human food production.

And, once the process was started, and populations were continuously growing, there was just no going back to the old hunter-gatherer lifestyle. This is what Harari calls the "luxury trap", and he describes a couple of interesting modern analogies. 

College graduates take demanding jobs in high-powered firms, vowing to work hard, earn lots of money and retire at 35. But, by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children in school, houses in the suburbs, and a taste for the high life. There is no easy way to retire, and they continue to slave away for decades.

Another modern example: when email arrived, people stopped spending so much time writing, addressing and posting physical letters, and then waiting days or weeks for a reply, opting instead for the ease and convenience of firing off a quick email, and expecting an almost immediate reply. But now people dash off emails for the slightest of reasons, not just when there is something important to relate, and we are all tied to our over-full inboxes, stressed and anxious. Progress?

I'm looking forward to the next three quarters of the book.

Norway breaks more EV records

I know I keep writing about little Norway, but it is a pretty special place. The latest from Troll Land is that almost 96% of the cars sold in Norway during the month of January 2025 were electric. 8,954 of the 9,343 cars sold were all-electric and, of the 50 most-sold models, only two were non-electric (the first of which came in 33rd place).

So, as places like Canada and the US.(and even Europe to a lesser extent) are seeing a serious retrenchment and backlash against electric vehicles, mainly as a result of Donald Trump's efforts, Norway forges ahead on its own path, doing the right thing and not giving in to commercial pressures and populist rhetoric. They expect to reach 100% electric cars later this year, ten years ahead of the EU, for example, which has a goal of 2035.

And they are doing this not by  banning the sale of internal combustion engines by a certain date like the EU and others, but by continuing to offer generous tax tax breaks on EVs, which make them more than competitive with heavily-taxed gas models.

Tuesday, February 04, 2025

Is this modern capitalism?

There wa a rather striking graphic in yesterday's Globe and Mail that didn't appear in the online version of the article for some reason, so I have copied it here.

It shows the progress of a vehicle being manufactured in North America. It shows just how complex and integrated the process is these days. But to me, more thsn anything, it shows just how convoluted and carbon-intense it has become.

It starts in Mexico with the metal casing. Then it goes up to Canada, where the crankshaft is re-finished. Then down to the US for further finishing ofnrhe crankshaft. Then back to Canada, where the crankshaft is incorporated into the engine. Back to a US assembly plant. Back to Canada for painting and trims. And finally back to the US to be sold to a consumer.

Now, that's kind of ridiculous, isn't it? Re-finishing in one country, then more re-finishing in another? A vehicle in the US has to go to Canada to be painted before returning to the US for sale? 

And it's not just cars, of course. Canada exports aluminum to the USA, they make cans, and then they export them BACK to Canada for beer, pop, etc, containers. Ridiculous!

It just seems so inefficient, although no doubt it is justified by economies of scale or labour practices or some other such considerations. But the unnecessary transportation costs and the alarming carbon footprint this system entails is surely hard to justify. Is this the state of modern capitalism in some of the most advanced countries in the world. Crazy.

Monday, February 03, 2025

What is Canada's role in US's illegal drug problem really?

Much as I hate to return to the subject of Donald Trump, which only serves to gratify his narcissistic tendencies, there is just so much wrong with his recent imposition of a 25% tariff on Canadian (and Mexican and Chinese) imports that it is hard to just let it go. 

American business groups and companies, politicians, and even regular American folk (even Republicans!), are complaining about it because they understand, as Trump seems not to, that it is not grounded in economic reality. It is not a way of correcting the balance of payments deficit with Canada, not is it helping American businesses or the country as a whole. 

In fact, it is not an economic measure at all, it is merely a kind of punishment for us not being American, a pressure tactic to get us to do what he wants. Purely and simply it is bullying; he does it because he can.

One of Trump's main beefs with Canada - other than just the fact that we are way too liberal about everything - is that he thinks that the American fentanyl problem is huge and Canadian-made. He has made it clear that, in his twisted mind, this is one of the main reasons for the tariff move.

Setting aside the fact that the demand for illegal drugs in the USA is very much an American thing - we don't create the demand! - Trump's claims that fentanyl is killing 250,000 - 300,000 American a year, as he said during his inaugural address, is clearly nonsense. (White House spokesperson Katherine Leavitt's claim that fentanyl is killing "tens of millions of Americans" is just laughable.)

It turns out that, at its worst (2022 - 2023), America's total drug overdose deaths were around 114,000, and that is from fentanyl, methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine and all other drugs. Not to be sneezed at, to be sure, but not anything like the figures Trump or his lackeys quote. Furthermore, since then, this figure has been plummeting, falling below 90,000 deaths for the first time in a decade.

As for Canada's role in all this, yes, there is some fentanyl finding its way from Canada to the USA, but less than 1%  of America's fentanyl comes from Canada, as Justin Trudeau pointed out in a speech on the tariffs, a figure backed up by the US Drug Enforcement Administration. We supply fewer illegal drugs to the US than they supply to us! A handy DEA report on fentanyl flow to the USA shows that China and Mexico are the major culprits, with India becoming a player (Canada is not even mentioned). 

Trump's blather about Canada's increasing contribution to narcotics distribution and the activities of Mexican drug cartels on Canadian soil is just that, blather. In 2024, for example, 43 pounds of fentanyl were seized at the US-Canadian border, compared to about 21,148 pounds at the US-Mexico border, putting Canada's contribition at about 0.2%. (UPDATE: Actually, it turns out that a third of even that small amount of 43 pounds was misreported: it was seized in Spokane, Washington, about 150 kilometres from the Canadian border, and traced to three Mexican nationals!) Also, both of those figures are already on the decline, as both Mexico and Canada clamp down on illegal activities. 

Furthermore, of the drugs that are seized at the US-Canada border, fentanyl makes up about 0.05%, an almost vanishingly small percentage. The vast majority is marijuana, khat (a relatively mild stimulant, particularly popular with Somalis) and cocaine. 

In fact, more drugs come into Canada from the USA than the other way round (to say nothing of the number of guns coming our way), and that flow is on the increase. So, in reality, it's the US that needs to get its act together not Canada.

It is a similar situation with illegal immigration from Canada to the USA, another irritant that Trump quotes as a major reason behind the tariffs. Trump insists that "millions and millions" of illegal aliens are crossing from Canada to the USA every year. US Customs and Border Protection data tells a different story: in 2024, US Border Patrol apprehended 23,721 illegal immigrants at their northern border (about 1.5% of the total), as compared to about 1.5 million apprehensions at the Mexican border. Also, more people crossed illegally from the US to Canada than the other way round. Natch.

Now, I don't expect Trump to listen to any of these figures. He does what he wants, and no amount of logic and statistics are going to get in the way of that. But it makes me feel better to get it off my chest. Trump, meanwhile, needs to look into why so many Americans are hooked on drugs and not leading better lives in the land of the free.

Sunday, February 02, 2025

Foreign interference? Treason? Meh...

Remember all the hoo-hah a few months ago about foreign interference in the Canadian electoral and political systems? There was talk of the "witting and semi-witting" participation of Canadian politicians in political meddling by Chinese, Indian, Russian and a bunch of other ne'erdowells. Hell, there was even talk of "traitors" and treason".

It was a big deal, and there was much tearing of hair and soul-searching, and not a little finger-pointing and partisan shouting. A detailed and wide-ranging public inquiry was called for.

Well, Justice Marie-Josée Hogue's final report has just been released and the conclusions are ... well, "underwhelming" is the word that springs to mind. There is absolutely "no evidence of 'traitors' " among Canadian lawmakers, and the country's democratic institutions remain "robust in the face of foreign interference" attempts. It's all a bit of a let-down quite honestly.

Some of the more outré claims and allegations should probably be walked back, preferably with apologies. But don't expect that in today's polarized, hyper-partisan atmosphere.

Mind you, Mme. Hogue didn't give a complete unconditional pass. She notes that some politicians had been found to be "behaving naively" and displaying "questionable" ethics and "concerning conduct", but nothing that had not been happening for many years previously. The few attempts to curry favour with lawmakers remain "margin and largely ineffective", and there is no need for "widespread alarm". Critically, the results of the last two elections were not swayed by any of the antics of foreign actors.

She did also make 51 recommendations to further safeguard future elections, most of which will be implemented in time for the next federal election in just a few short months' time. She also pointed to the general climate of nastiness and disinformation that has become the norm now, since Trump's successes with it south of the border, suggesting that this is probably a much bigger problem than direct interference by state actors.

Saturday, February 01, 2025

Brexit - five years on

Happy Fifth Anniversary, Brexit! Or is it? Believe it or not, it has been 5 years to the day since Britain severed political ties with the European Union, on January 31st 2020 (and four years since it left the European single market and customs union).

So, how has  that gone?

Not that well, it seems, although maybe not quite as disastrously as I might have predicted. 

Setting aside the way in which it has divided British society, setting family members and long-standing friends against each other in acrimonious political dispute, Brexit's effect on Britain's trade has been generally negative, economists agree, but not entirely so. 

Exports of goods are substantially down, as expected, although different studies disagree as to how much (6%? 30%?), with smaller companies being disproportiately affected. But exports of services from the UK (advertising. management consulting, information technology, etc) are up, a lot. Overall, the Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that the UK's economy has taken about a £100 billion hit.(about 4%) as a result of Brexit.

On immigration, a major plank of the Brexit campaign, results have also been mixed. Net immigration from Europe has indeed fallen a bit, but immigration from the rest of the world has increased by a lot more. So, net immigration has actually increased, by quite a lot! 

Travel in and out of the UK/EU has not changed that much, although plans to introduce ETA/ETIAS permits to later this year will make the administration even more burdensome and expensive, in both directions, and this may (or may not) have a dampening effect on travel.

Likewise, Brexit was supposed to give the UK much more independence in the laws it can pass. But thousands of "retained EU laws" were passed in the UK just after Brexit announcement. And only a small proportion of those (mainly small obscure regulations, at that) were repealed by the various Conservative governments, so UK law actually still reflects EU law pretty closely.

And has Brexit actually saved the UK bags of money, as the Leave campaign promised? Yes, around £18 billion a year in public sector contributions to the EU are no longer being paid out. But, at the same time, £5 billion a year in agricultural funding from the EU has stopped, and $4 billion a year in "rebates" on EU Budget contributions further whittles down the annual saving to around £9 billion. Add to that £21.3 billion in official Brexit Withdrawal Agreement payments to the EU, and the UK has hardly seen any overall savings yet, although that may yet start to materialize in the years to come (there are still many unknowns involved).

For example, after Brexit, the UK did stop paying into the Horizon pan-European scientific research scheme, from which it used to be a net beneficiary, in terms of science grants, etc). But in 2023, it decided to re-join the scheme, even though it is now a net payer to the tune of about £2 billion a year.

So, as ever in politics, nothing is ever simple, certainly not as simple as populists like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage assured the British public. And now, with a more conciliatory Labour government in power, the future may be even more difficult to predict.

Saturday, January 25, 2025

What's the truth behind the fabled "seventh wave"?

As I sit watching the waves on a beach at the less trendy end of Grand Cayman, I got to wondering about the truth about the mythical (pr perhaps not) "seventh wave".

The truth, as these things usually turn out, is complicated.

The short answer is that the old saw is nonsense: ocean waves are generated by the wind way out to sea before they crash onto the beach, and the wind is capricious and unpredictable. Why then, should we expect waves to be regular?

However, once a few waves get going and begin to feed off and amplify each other, they do become a bit more coherent and regular, and in practice they do tend to form packs or groups of between 12 and 16 waves, with the biggest waves in the centre of the pack. So, the group of waves typically goes from small to big and back to small again, with the largest wave of the group right around number seven or eight.

However, that does still mean that the largest waves only occur every 12, 14 or 16 waves, not the 7 of folklore. Sorry.

And just while we are about it, why do waves break anyway? Waves out at sea are caused by the wind imparting its energy and friction to the waves it comes into contact with. But waves out at sea usually don't break - they just cause bigger and bigger swells.

When the waves approach a coastline, though, the water is shallower and there is less water to draw up into the wave. At the same time, there is more friction acting on the bottom of the wave (where it meets the seabed) than there is at the top. So, the bottom is slowed down more than the top until eventually the top of the wave kind of overbalances and topples over itself due to the force of gravity. This is what we see as the wave breaking. So, there you go.

Essential reading about how the world is sleepwalking into fascism

I have been making my way through Carol Off's excellent 2024 book, At a Loss For Words: Conversation in an Age of Rage

It is ostensibly a book about words and how they have been changed, redefined and weaponized. But it is also a pretty comprehensive (and rather depressing) look at how the alt right has become such a force in Canadian, American and worldwide politics, and how the Overton window has been shifted so far to the right that outright fascist views are being openly espoused by mainstream politicians.

Along the way, she looks at Donald Trump, Pierre Poilievre, SteoehnHarper, Viktor Orban, Vladimir Putin, Radovan Karazdic, Ron DeSantis, and several lesser-known, but equally influential and blameworthy, names like Arthur Finkelstein, Christopher Rufo, James Buchanan, Leonard Leo and Tamara Lich, not to mention a cornucopia of well-funded, largely secretive, organizations whose single-minded purpose is the imposition of anti-woke autocratic rule and the permanent destruction of caring liberal democratic governance.

The book is replete with literally hundreds of interlinked anecdotes about how the extreme right has employed disinformation, exaggeration, doublethink, and outright barefaced lies to achieve its ends, and how successful it has been at it. "Dystopian" and "Orwellian" don't even cover it. So confident are they that they make little or no attempt to dissemble, and there is oodles of publicly-available evidence of their Machiavellian machinations.

The chapters are named after words that have been co-opted by the hard right in many different countries: Freedom, Democracy, Truth, Woke, Choice, and Taxes. But what Ms. Off does really well is outline how interconnected the right is throughout the world, and how they learn from each other, sometimes indirectly, but often surprisingly directly, to an extent that the left has never been able to. 

Clearly, the hard right, and in many cases - let's not beat about the bush - openly fascist, regimes see their opportunity, their moment in history, like at no other time since the 1930s and 1940s.

It's only when you read all of this, together in one place, that you realize the enormity of what is going on under our very noses. It makes truly scary, but essential, reading.

Friday, January 24, 2025

Do we really need a purpose in life?

Interesting article in Psychology Today, not a publication I often read, about whether we really need to have a purpose in life.

Sounds a bit heavy perhaps, but I've always thought that having a purpose in life, and  constantly searching for a "meaning" of life, to be overrated, just a back door into the dead end of religion. Personally, I don't feel the need for a meaning to my life, or a purpose to it. I'm here and it's quite nice, and that's just fine for me. But lots of people agonize over it, and the lack of it leads many people into mental health problems. So, you could argue that often it is this need for meaning and purpose that CAUSES mental illness.

The article outlines the way in which wanting and having a purpose in life helps many people become successful, happy members of society. But if it turns out that they change their minds about that purpose they have set for themselves, that's when the stress and anxiety clicks in. And if someone feels they need a purpose and don't find one, they too turn stressed, depressed and worse.

Better, then, not to go there at all, it seems to me. Just live your life, be nice to people, try to leave things a bit better than you found them (or at least not worse), and just enjoy it. I know I am perhaps in an enviable position, born into the western world, well-educated and not short of money, so maybe I have a rosier outlook than many. Personally, I blame religion for much of that obsession with meaning and purpose, but then I tend to blame religion for many things.

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

COVID-19 update (yes, COVID-19)

Remenber COVID? Yup, still with us.

The latest Health Canada update of the status of respiratory diseases indicates that the COVID positivity rate has decreased a bit, but that some 4,000 people have been hospitalized for COVID since the end of August, of which 285 required intensive care. This is obviously much fewer than at the pandemic's height, but it is far from insignificant.

The stat that really stood out for me, though, was that there have been 750 deaths from COVID since August, compared to 43 deaths from flu, for example. So, to say that COVID has become just like the seasonal flu bug is far from the truth. I'm wearing a mask when we fly south later this week.

Does Trump really not understand how tariffs work?

It's no secret that Donald Trump loves tariffs. "To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff, and it's my favourite word", he said in a Bloomberg interview (and many other times). I wonder if he knows that "tariff" actually comes from an Arabic word, via Italian. Probably not.

I wonder though if it's possible that he doesn't actually understand how tariffs work. He must have had economists explain it to him, surely, and economists agree that tariffs are costly and would not generate the benefits that Trump claims for them

However, as he reiterated during his inauguration, Trump appears to believe that imposing tariffs on imports benefits Americans financially: "Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens". 

Except that's not how tariffs work, as any economist could tell him. A tariff levied on imported goods is borne by the domestic company that imports the goods, not the foreign company that exports them. That company would then charge consumers more to compensate - few, if any, companies will voluntarily take a hit to their bottom line and NOT raise consumer prices - making the goods more expensive for (in this case) American consumers, increasing inflation in the process.

For good measure, the USA already has a very similar example of the ill-advised imposition of tariffs from nearly 100 years ago, from which to learn. In 1930, under President Herbert Hoover, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act imposed 20% tariffs on a broad spectrum of goods, against the advice of hundreds of American economists, employing broadly similar arguments to Mr. Trump. Unfortunately, we know how that one turned out. It triggered a global trade war and retaliatory tariffs, the stock market crashed, US exports fell by two-thirds, unemployment tripled, inflation spiked, and the 1929 recession tipped into a full-blown depression. Oops.

So, what gives? Did Trump manage to find an economist that would tell him what he wants to hear, rather than the truth? That's certainly plausible, but weird. Maybe he just doesn't understand what he's being told, or just prefers to "go with his gut"? Also plausible, but also weird. 

I'm not really expecting Trump to re-evaluate his gut feeling; that's not the way he rolls. But it will be interesting to see just how badly it goes.

What is an executive order and why is it even legal?

Donald Trump is expected to sign a record-breaking 100+ executive orders on his first day as President ("Day 1", as he would have it). He had them all ready and waiting. Here's a quick summary of the main ones, and it makes for some scary reading. During his first term he signed more executive orders than any other recent president; his second term is likely to blow it away. A particular attraction for him is that there is little to no oversight from Congress, and he gets to feel like a bona fide dictator.

But what is an executive order anyway, and why are they allowed? An executive order is basically a legally-binding written order by a president which does not require congressional approval. Their authority comes from Article II of the Constitution - "The executive power shall be vested in the President of the United  States" - although this is so vague as to be almost useless as a guide.

Almost all US presidents use them - Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton particularly liked them, although even they can't hold a candle to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge, whose use of them numbered into the thousands. Donald Trump REALLY likes them.

They can be used for relatively minor things, like establishing a new national holiday or renaming the Gulf Mexico, or much more substantive issues like nationalizing an industry or instituting mass deportations or mator trade tariff changes. increasingly they are being used to reverse an executive order of a previous President in a potentually unending back-and-forth.

Technically, Congress can pass a law to override an executive action (although the President may be able to block that), and technically their legality can be reviewed by the Office of legal Counsel (which doesn't always happen) and they can be reversed by the courts if they are illegal or unconstitutional. But in the main, a President's executive orders stick, at least for a few years.

It seems ridiculous to me that such a powerful and essentially unregulated political tool can reside in theg hands of a single individual. An unscrupulous or mentally unbalanced president could enact all sorts of petty or dangerous laws (sound familiar?) with impunity, contrary to the wishes of the governing party or Congress in general, and certainly against the will of the populace. 

How is this democratic? A loose cannon like Donald Trump could bring in all sorts of wacky rules to the detriment of the country, and indeed of the whole world, without any congressional agreement or legal regulation (especially given the tame Supreme Court Trump has engineered, the generally pro-Trump Republican majority in Congress, and the fact that he has surrrounded himself with a cabinet of fiercely loyal acolytes, regardless of their experience in their jobs, or lack thereof). 

I'm not aware of anything even remotely similar to this system of executive orders in other jurisdictions like Canada or the UK.

Monday, January 20, 2025

Turns out, most Americans disagree with Trump's policies

Here's a conundrum. Most of the people who voted Donald Trump into power don't actually agree with his policies. So, if they didn't vote for his policies, what did they vote for? His charisma? His brotherley love vibes? A chimera?

A recent survey for Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that:

  • Only about 4 in 10 support mass deportations of immigrants whichever not been convicted of violent crimes, and a larger proportion oppose it.
  • Almost half of American oppose imposing tariffs on all goods imported into the USA, and only 3 in 10 support it.
  • Only 2 in 10 support pardoning those charge in the January 6th 2021 riots, and 6 in 10 oppose it (only 4 in 10 Republicans suport it).
  • More people (about 4 in 10) oppose increasing drilling on federal lands than support it (just over 3 in 10).
  • About half of Americans oppose taking the US out of the Paris climate agreement and only 2 in 10 would support it.
  • Substantially more people support Biden's expansion of protections for LGBTQ+ students than support Trump's plan to eliminate protection for trans students.
  • About half of Americans oppose Trump's plan to raise, or even eliminate, the government debt ceiling, while only a quarter support it.
  • Just about the only thing that Americans agree on is eliminating income tax on tips (over half, compared to 2 in 10 opposed), but that was something that Democrat Kamala Harris campaigned on too.

So, why did they vote for Trump, again? Mass hysteria? Overcome by emotion, tired of logic and reason? By mistake? Well, they're stuck with him now. And so is the rest of the world.

Saturday, January 18, 2025

Retaliatory tariffs may not be the way to go for Canada

With Donald Trump's threats of 25% tariffs hanging over us, Canadian politicians, economists and businessmen are arguing among themselves over the best retaliatory tariffs to levy back against our largest trading partner, the USA. But everyone seems agreed that retaliatory tariffs are in fact the way to go, indeed the only possible way to go.

What if they weren't? I know it's economic heresy, but I can't help wondering whether we have fully thought this through. And finally I came across another heretical article in the Globe and Mail asking the same question.

Many commentators have leveraged the 2018 experience, when Trump levied tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum exports and Canada hit back with a tit-for-tat retaliation, resulting in the American tariffs being lifted and new agreement struck on steel and aluminum. But it didn't have to end that way, and there is no guarantee that it would end that way a second time, particularly when dealing the ever-mercurial Trump. And we still ended up with a worse deal on steel and aluminum than we started with. The Globe article offers some alarming counter-examples from recent years.

Trump just uses tariffs of this sort as a bully tactic, just one part of his weird negotiating technique. If we retaliate, we hurt our own economy even more, just as the American economy is hurt by Trump's tariffs. Do we really want to voluntarily saddle ourselves with this double whammy? Nothing we do to America has the power to hurt them anything like as much as we are hurt ourselves, despite what a belligerent Doug Ford says. I'm sorry, but we are not going to somehow bring American to its knees.

Maybe we just need to ride out the Trump years, much as we rode out the COVID pandemic, by strengthening our social safety net and rebuilding our infrastructure, as the article suggests. (Trump is a pest very similar to a nasty virus). It won't be easy or cheap. But if we impose retaliatory tariffs, we would still have to ride it out, in addition to the harm it does to our own economy. 

And, of course. there is no guarantee that any of it will change Trump's mind one iota. Trump doesn't really understand tariffs very well, despite it being the main single plank of his plan for economic trade. He seems to think that tariffs are paid by the other country (Canada, Mexico, China) and that they represent basically free money for the US. (In fact, American tariffs are paid by Americans, as people hav been telling him for years.) But Trump is not a logical being. What he is is vindictive, and our tariffs may well invite more (and potentially worse) retaliatory retaliations.

Israelism - another side to the story of Israel

I finally got around to watching Israelism, a hard-hitting documentary about indoctrination and misinformation about Israel among American Jews.

Subtitled "The Awakening of Young American Jews", the 2023 film didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know because I have read around the subject, although I'm sure it will be a shocking eye-opener for a lot of people.

It looks in some detail at the way in which young Jewish people in America are fed a very one-sided and often false story about the creation of Israel, the way Jews are treated, and how the state of Israel is a paradise for Jews. It explains how well-funded this movement is, and how young impressionable American Jews are being indoctrinated and even recruited into the Israeli army.

It also shows that there is a whole cohort of young American Jews who are questioning this indoctrination, and visiting Israel and Palestine personally to see for themselves. They come away with a very different impression - a place where Palestinian lands are illegally settled by a rapacious Israeli political machine and fanatical fundamentalists, and Palestinian people are subjugated and oppressed in an apartheid system at least as brutal and absolute as anything in 20th century South Africa.

This has led to a plethora of activist groups in America of Jews opposed to the politics of the Israeli state, and supportive of Palestinian freedom and human rights. These groups are being routinely harassed and threatened online and in person by angry Zionist elements, and subjected to regular death threats, but they are bravely persisting because they have seen the injustice and feel they cannot remain silent.

The film makes no secret of the fact that there is indeed a burgeoning antisemitic movement in America (and worldwide) as the far right gains a foothold and unquestioningly pro-Israel populist politicians and demagogues proliferate. But it makes the point that, notwithstanding, the propaganda we are being fed about Israel remains wrong, and that criticizing Israel is not in itself antisemitic, as we are also told.

The documentary was produced before the October 7th 2023 incursion by Hamas and the bloodbath in Palestine that ensued in its wake. Perhaps not surprisingly, after the attack and the start of the war in Palestine, there was a concerted effort to get the movie banned on the grounds that it is antisemitic - it's not, and the movie itself explains why it's not.

It should be required viewing, but so entrenched are the pro-Israel views of many people, Jews and non-Jews, that I don't hold much hope that it will change many minds.

Friday, January 17, 2025

Why has US banned Red 3 and Canada hasn't

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just banned a food additive known as Red 3, on the grounds that it has been shown in animals studies to cause cancer. The synthetic food dye, which colours candies, drinks, cosmetics, even some medications, a lurid cherry-red colour, has also been banned in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. It was banned in cosmetics in the US as long ago as 1990.

And yet, FD&C Red No. 3, or is perfectly legal in Canada. So, what gives?

It turns out it's all about legal niceties. There is a legal provision in the USA that obliges the FDA to ban food additives found to cause cancer in either humans or animals. The Canadian rules only operate if a substance is found to be dangerous for humans.

You might think the American law is superior and we, here in Canada, should just ban the stuff anyway. But the two US rat studies that led to the ban found that Red 3 caused cancer in lab rats with a "rat-specific hormonal mechanism" that does not exist in humans. So, the effect of the additive on rats would almost certainly not translate into humans.

Canadian scientists agree that "evidence demonstrating human safety concern is lacking", and that "there is actually no evidence at all that it would be a danger in cosmetics". Consequently, there are some limits on how much of the food colouring can be used, but no ban. Moreover, a joint UN/WHO committee in 2018 looked at studies involving both humans and animals and found no safety concerns for the dye as a food additive.

That's not to say candies containing Red 3 will do you any good. Personally, I would steer well clear of anything coloured radioactive scarlet. And, a note to manufacturers, there are perfectly good natural dyes out there (beet juice extracts, anthocyanins extracted from berries, etc) without having to resort to synthetic crap just to sell a few more units.

Thursday, January 16, 2025

Doug Ford looks to beat the Underhill Balance Theory

I hadn't really noticed it, but apparently there is an unwritten rule in Canadian politics that whatever Camada votes federally, the province of Ontario votes the opposite. It even has a name, the Underhill Balance Theory, after Frank Underhill, a political scientist who noticed the phenomenon way back in the 1940s.

And it does seem to work. In the heyday of the federal Liberal Party after the Second World War - Mackenzie King, Louis St Laurent, Lester B. Pearson, Pierre Elliott Trudeau - Ontario elected a series of Conservative Premiers - George Drew, Leslie Frost, John Robarts, Bill Davis - as a kind of balance.

When Conservative Brian Mulroney came to power in Ottawa in 1984, Ontario responded by voting in first Liberal David Peterson, and then NDP Bob Rae. With federal Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien came Conservative Ontario Premier Mike Harris. When Conservative Stephen Harper replaced Chrétien federally, Ontario turned back to the Liberals with Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne. And with Justin Trudeau in Ottawa, of course, came Doug Ford in Toronto.

So now, as a new federal election looms, which the Conservatives are widely expected to win handily, Doug Ford - who is apparently also considering calling an Ontario election, even though he has a strong majority, good polling results, and more than 16 months before the next scheduled election! - must have the Underhill Balance Theory at the back of his mind. 

Indeed, it could well be a major reason why Ford wants to bring an Ontario election so far forward: to lock in the Conservative administration in Ontario notwithstanding a potential Conservative federal government, to break the Underhill jinx (as Ford might see it).

Top Liberals distance themselves from the carbon tax

We know that the Conservative Party of Canada opposes carbon taxes, and intends to end them the moment they get their hands on some power. God knows, Pierre Poilievre says "Axe the Tax!" at the start of every sentence he utters. You feel like saying "Gezundheit!" back to him each time.

It now looks like the Liberal Party of Canada, which brought the tax in, is going the same way. Both of the likely Liberal leadership candidates are now making noises along those lines. Chrystia Freeland, long a staunch Liberal climate warrior, is standing on a platform that specifically calls for the scrapping of the consumer carbon tax (although not the industry one). Even Mark Carney, the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance, is starting to distance himself from the Liberals' carbon tax policy.

I guess climate change measures don't win votes any more. The Liberals (and, I'm guessing, even the NDP, as we will probably see when election platforms are unveiled later this year) are trying to out-Tory the Tories. Sad.

UPDATE

Mark Carney, who these days is looking like the front-runner for the Liberal Party leadership, has firmed up his plans to scrap the consumer carbon charge if he is elected. He says that the policy is too divisive, and that many Canadians perceive it as having a negative effect on their households. 

Well, if the problem is one of perceptions, fix it: explain that they are not worse off for the carbon tax because there is an off-setting rebate that sees most most people actually benefit financially from the policy. Don't just cancel it - that's political nonsense. 

So, now no-one is willing to defend the carbon tax, once the flagship of the Liberal plan to fight global warming. And yet all the reasons that were once  put forward for it still apply. Climate change is still going on, you know; it didn't stop because some people feel, for whatever reason, worse off, or because Donald Trump was elected in America.

And so much for Poilievre's "carbon tax election" - he's going to have to come up with a new three-word slogan now.

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

A moth that build a log cabin

There are some pretty strange critters out there with some pretty bizarre habits. But a new one to me is the Bagworm Moth (Psychidae), whose caterpillar saws little twigs and sticks and builds them into miniature log cabins for themselves.

Neat, huh? The log cabins are even mobile and move around with the caterpillars. The logs are held together with silk that the caterpillars produce, and they actually build the edifice on their own backs.

Interestingly, only the males of the species transform into adult moths. The females stay in a mature larval state, and never grow wings and legs like the males. The males only live for a few days after mating, although the females live longer while her duties call. The eggs stay safe and warn in the log cabin, while the females tend them. 

Cool.

Is Marco Rubio an elf?

I've never really noticed before but, hey, is Marco Rubio, likely Secretary of State-to-be, is he an elf? A goblin, perhaps?


I've never noticed those ears, but they are huge, and yes, distinctly pointy.


Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Stephen Harper stands up for Canada

It's pretty rare that I agree with anything that Conservative ex-Prime Minister Stephen Harper says. But strange times make for strange bedfellows, as they probably say.

In comparison to some of the garbage spewing from Donald Trump's mouth, Harper sounds eminently sensible and positively statesmanlike. In particular, his responses to Trump's recent drivel concerning US-Canadian relations on an American podcast were right on the nail.

He started off thumping the tub a bit in response to Trump's threats to use "economic force" to make Canada into the 51st state: " We are Canadian, not American, and we want to be friends, not, as they say, annexed."

But some of his responses to Trump's more specific grouses were better. To Trump's assertions that the US is subsidizing Canada and that it does not need Canada's exports anyway, Harper pointed out that, "It's true that Canada presently has a modest trade surplus with the United States. The reason we do is because you buy so much of our oil and gas." Well, duh!

Furthermore, "Maybe Canadians, if Mr. Trump feels this way, should be looking at selling their oil and gas to other people. We certainly have always wanted to do some of that - maybe now's the time to do it." And because we sell to the US at discounted prices, "In fact, you buy it at a discount to world markets. It's actually Canada that subsidizes the United States in this regard".

On illegal immigration from Canada to the US, Harper say, "There is no migrant flow happening from Canada to the United States of any significant numbers, and I'm going to tell you right now, drugs, guns, crime, most of those things flow north, not south. A lot more flows into Canada from the United States than flows out of it." Quite.

Canada's reliance on US military protection? "When we talk about subsidizing Canadian defense, I don't know what he's talking about. We have a shared defense of North America, and the United States does that because it's in the vital interest of the United States." Pow!

Trump's claim that he helped push out Justin Trudeau? "Whether or not we have Mr. Trudeau as our prime minister is our choice as Canadians. You know, we don't tell you whom to elect as president of the United States ... This is not Mr. Trump's decision. It's the decision of Canadians." 

And finally, if Pierre Poilievre is elected as Prime Minister: "If the United States actually threatens the sovereignty and independence of Canada, Mr. Poilievre will be forced to take a very different approach to Canada's place in the world." Right on!

I never liked Stephen Harper, either the man or his politics. But there he was, in Trump's own house, doing a pretty good job of standing up for Canada. Granted, it's easier because he is no longer in government, and can afford to make himself objectionable. But good job, I say.

Sunday, January 12, 2025

Musings on the state of the world (and my place in it)

I was just thinking - in an absent, abstract sort of a way, during one of my many sleepless nights - about the state of the world. And it's not good, obvo.

The Four Horsemen are abroad (conquest, war, famine and death, if you are counting), and quite possibly the Antichrist. Perhaps the Four Horsemen could be re-cast slightly for the modern day as War, Plague, Ignorance and Right-Wing Populism, but you get the idea. And the Antichrist? That would be Donald Trump, enabler-in-chief of many of the ills besetting the world today. The Gates of Hell are open, and the demons are loose.

As we register the hottest year ever (yet again!) and swathes of America are burning in the middle of winter, political leaders - and a frightening number of regular folks who sleepwalk along with them like rats with the Pied Piper - are assuring us that we don't need to do anything about it. Even as we speak, climate change policies are being dismantled, subsidies for clean energy and sustainable tech disbanded, fossil fuels given a new lease on life.

Companies are rewriting their rules on diversity, equity and inclusion, even on telling the truth, because, with Trump in charge, they don't need to think about such things. Hard-fought rights, achieved through decades of slow, painstaking effort, are being abandoned overnight. Truth, respect and common sense have never been so imperilled and devalued. 

It seems like Trump, Musk and the MAGA crowd are redefining social more and economic expectations everywhere, and right-wing populist acolytes in other countries (Poilievre, Farage, Meloni, Orban, Wilder, Le Pen, Modi, many others) are calling the shots, suddenly lent legitimacy by the hateful rhetoric and thoughtless policy-making of Trump and his lackeys.

The Overton window has lurched to the right in an unprecedented manner (unprecedented since the 1930s anyway). For the right wing, almost nothing is off the table, nothing considered too extreme. Even progressives are making pronouncements that would have been unimaginable just a few short years ago, walking back policies they once saw as essential, incontrovertible, in the face of the anti-woke backlash. And it has happened so fast, it has almost happened while no-one was looking.

All of this is going on at the same time as power-mad war-mongers like Putin and Netanyahu hold sway, and autocratics like Xi make their subtler moves to mould the world in their favour. Coincidence? I guess so, or maybe each leads the others on, in a kind of feedback loop.

Maybe it is the inexorable back-and-forth swing of history. Maybe it is merely the influence of one particularly forceful demagogue, who will fade into senescence and obscurity in just a few short years. Or maybe it is the new paradigm that we need to come to terms with and accommodate. 

I would hate for the latter to be true, though. I'm an older guy, and I feel pretty powerless and discouraged. I just feel like crawling into a shell and waiting it out. The older I get the more cynical I become about the world and the people in it. 

But I have to believe that a new generation of idealists is growing up, incensed at the direction the world is going, and the alarming way it is wobbling on it axis. I was once that idealist, although it seems like a very long time ago that I had the energy. 

Maybe this is just me capitulating and throwing in the towel. But I feel like all I am able to do nowadays is to just live as exemplary a life as I can, in my own middle-class white-guy way - drive my electric car, keep my solar panels clean, buy carbon offsets when I fly, donate to charity, try to be nice to all people most of the time, follow the rules if they seem sensible. I know it's not really enough, but I live in hope that some saviour, some anti-Trump, will lead us out of this soon.

Friday, January 10, 2025

The 1.5°C global temperature threshold has officially been exceeded

Well, we all knew it, but now it's official: 2024 was the hottest year on record and the first year to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels (which is usually taken as 1850-1900). The dreaded 1.5°C threshold enshrined in the Paris Accord has therefore been passed, and it continues to increase with no sign of a slow-down. Paris Climate Agreement bye-bye.

A couple of graphs from Europe's Copernicus Project paint a stark picture. The first one shows the not-so-slow-and-steady increase of global average surface temperatures over and above pre-industrial levels for every year since 1967. The second one shows five year averages all the way back to 1850.

It makes sobering viewing. Unless, of course, you just don't care, which seems to be the position taken by an increasing umber of populist governments, and the people who vote for them.

Trump politicizes California's fire disaster

As Los Angeles and environs suffer from unprecedented winter forest fires - currently at least 10 dead and over 10,000 buildings burned down, with no end in sight - Donald Trump has decided to weigh in with his explanation of it all.

Apparently, it's not due to Santa Ana winds and climate change at all, it's all due to Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom and his misplaced concern for a small worthless fish.

You see, according to Trump, there is a mysterious "very large faucet" somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, that would allow millions of gallons of "excess" water to flow down into California from Canada and the north of the US, but Governor Newsom ("Newscum", as Trump insists on calling him, in his usual pre-school manner) refuses to sign a "water restoration declaration" that would allow this because he is unduly concerned about an endangered fish called the delta smelt. "He is the blame for this".

If all this seems improbable, that's because it is in fact a load of old cobblers. As Oregon's state climatologist says, "There is indeed no such diversion system, and none has been seriously proposed that I am aware of".

So, Trump has basically made something up (or someone has made it up for him, let's not give him too much credit!) in order to politicize a natural disaster that he should be expressing concern over. This is who you have elected, America.

UPDATE

Others in MAGAland have chosen to blame the fact that LA's fire department is run by women, who, presumably, are too dumb to carry out such a responsible job. (Trump will probably amplify that too when he finds out about it.). According to another MAGA commentator, it's even worse: the fire department leaders are not just women, but lesbians!

Fire chief Kristin Crowley is indeed a woman, but only 3 of the 12 top officials in LAFD are female (I have no idea if they are lesbians, but maybe!), so it's a bit of a stretch, to say the least. As to why a woman would not be able to do the job perfectly well is not explained, apparently being axiomatic for many of the post's readers.

Not to be outdone, of course, Elon Musk had to make his opinion known, and his take is that it is all those black firefighters and California's woke DEI policies that are to blame. *sigh*

Donald Trump Jr.'s considered opinion is that the fires are down to woke California's support for Ukraine. This might sound like a particularly difficult logical deduction, but Trump Jr. can do that kind of extreme mental gymnastics.

California did indeed make some donations of firefighting equipment to Ukraine back in 2022, but no-one else has managed to make the quantum leap of logic to connect that to the current extreme forest fire situation. Well done, Donny.

Los Angeles' fire chief has specifically said that equipment is not the issue, although personnel to use the equipment maybe is. And, more to the point, no firefighting equipment or personnel would be sufficient to deal with fires of this magnitude.

In fact, there are now so many weird far-right beliefs being disseminated that Governor Gavin Newsom has had to create a whole website with which to refute them. How much time and effort gets wasted by these clowns, who seem to have nothing better to do than to make stuff up!

Wednesday, January 08, 2025

So, are carbon taxes actually working in Canada?

Here's an interesting article on the effectiveness of carbon taxes and cap-and-trade schemes. Some are arguing that the days of carbon taxes are over, mainly because people (read "Conservatives") don't like paying taxes (even if they receive a rebate to make it income-neutral). Even some progressives are seeing the writing on the wall and starting to look into alternatives. Hell, even Mark Carney is saying that the carbon tax has "served a purpose up until now".

What the article shows is that, yes, carbon taxes and cap-and-trade are effective, but maybe not as effective as we once thought. Canada's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions HAVE fallen since 2005, but only by about 0.4% a year on average. We need them to fall by about 4.5% a year to achieve our targets by 2030, about ten times the current rate.

Drilling down, British Columbia was the first jurisdiction in Canada to establish a carbon tax (2008). As the graph below shows, its GHG emissions did indeed fall for a while, but then started to increase again (with a dip for the pandemic) and, by 2022, they were only about 1% lower than when the carbon tax was started 14 years earlier.

Quebec introduced its cap-and-trade program in 2013. It too saw a slight reduction in GHG emissions for a few years (see graph below) before they started to climb again, dipping during the pandemic, to end 2022 just 1.25% lower than in 2013.


Ontario only had a cap-and-trade system for a year or so in 2017 before Doug Ford closed it down, and the federal carbon tax only took effect in 2019, just before the pandemic. What the graph below shows, though, is that Ontario's GHG emissions have been steadily decreasing since 2005 anyway (shutting down its coal plants helped with that), and the cap-and-trade and carbon tax have made little to no difference. Between 2005 and 2019, Ontario's GHG emissions fell by 19%, but since 2019 they have gone up slightly (except for a slight dip during the pandemic).


All in all, this is not particularly impressive, it has to be said. So, what does the article suggest to allow us to up our game? Given that the rich contribute much more to our GHG emissions than the poor, the author proposes a much more progressive income-tested carbon tax, along with regulatory changes and increased incentives to switch to renewable energy. 

Hmm. I guess I'm on board with that, in principle at least. Just how do we push such a scheme through, though, during the current backlash against all things environmental, and when we are staring down the barrel of four years of "axe-the-tax" Conservative rule in Canada, and slash-and-burn Trump just across our southern border? That's not so clear.

Meta cancels fact-checking because truth is no longer a cultural norm

Meta (i.e. Facebook) has just announced that it will stop any fact-checking it used to do on Facebook posts

Well, that's convenient. CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes no secret of the fact that this move is precipitated by the election of one, Donald Trump, to the US presidency. He referred to Trump's election as "a cultural tipping point towards prioritizing, once again, speech". 

Well, speech has always been a priority, as far as I know, as has free speech (which is presumably what he actually means). But the tipping pointing in question is really accurate free speech, true speech. Trump, of course, does not like fact-checking because his approach to politics relies on lies, and lots of them. Zuckerberg also calls the move getting "back to our roots around free expression", whatever that might mean.

Mr. Zuckerberg, it seems, is quite content to sway whichever way the political winds blow, truth be damned. He says that the current Meta system of fact-checking moderators (brought in in 2016 to try to stem the tsunami of untruths let loose before and after Trump's last election) is prone to too many mistakes and biases. So, his solution is not to improve it, but to get rid of it completely, replacing it with an X-style system of "community notes", where individuals can point out factual errors (in their opinion) but the original post stays, however erroneous. Because that's free speech, don't you know? And look how well it's working on X...

Zuckerberg was never the most upstanding or ethical of individuals - his pursuit of money was always top of mind - but this move shows his true colours, currently red. It's just one more alarming portent of just how bad a second Trump administration can get, for the USA and for the world.

To further curry favour with Trump, Zuckerberg has specifically ruled that Meta users will be allowed to call LGBTQ people "mentally ill", a move that has sparked a backlash within the organization, and widespread condemnation without. Still, some people will be happy, and those are the people that Zuckerberg cares about (at the moment anyway).

This is all part and parcel of the more general American corporate trend away from DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) in hiring and employment practices, that has really gathered steam since Trump's election. It's almost like all these major companies were just going along with all that woke nonsense for a while, and now see that the wind is blowing from another quarter and are more than happy to get back to money-making with all those ethical hurdles removed. 

Meta, Amazon, Walmart, McDonalds, and many of the major banks and financial institutions have all walked back their DEI commitments recently, in what is one of the most blatant and unabashed corporate about-faces I can ever remember. They accompany their moves with some likely-sounding (but devoid of actual meaning) bafflegab, like "shifting legal and policy landscape", "winding down outdated programs and materials", "mitigate bias for all, no matter your background", etc. But you can almost see them grinning and rubbing their hands in the background.

Tuesday, January 07, 2025

Justin Trudeau's legacy

As Justin Trudeau hands in his resignation letter, what will he be mostly remembered for? I'm sure there will be many such analyses of Trudeau's legacy in the press in the days to come, but CityNews offers one early list:

  • Legalizing cannabis - a promise kept, but probably not a defining moment.
  • Reneging on election reform - he expressed his sadness for not having pushed through the proportional representation reforms he promised us (although he had plenty of opportunity while the Liberals had a majority government).
  • Indigenous reconciliation - much more remains to be done, but Trudeau has "done more to improve the quality of life for First Nations than any other prime minister" according to AFN National Chief Cindy Woodhouse.
  • Canada Child Benefit - the new non-taxable income-dependent benefit went a long way toward reducing poverty in the country.
  • Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act - a much-needed revenue-neutral carbon tax, and the first time a Canadian leader put their money where their environmental mouth is (although, paradoxically, it is now probably the main single reason for the Liberals' current unpopularity, even if it was a popular move at the time).
  • COVID pandemic measures - not a bad job of handling an unhandlable situation (even if some Western truckers didn't like the vaccine mandates, they saved countless lives).
  • NAFTA re-negotiation - he and his team made the best of a bad deal, as he did in more general terms in handling the unhandlable Donald Trump.

All in all, not a bad resumé, really. To this one might add: the establishment of a gender-balanced cabinet, "because it's 2015" (although it wouldn't last); the welcoming of tens of thousands of Syrian and Afghan refugees; enacting access to medical assistance in dying (MAID); unflagging support and aid to Ukraine in its existential war against Russia; $10-a-day subsidized childcare; important first steps on comprehensive dental and pharmacare. Yes, he lost his way towards the end, but this is nevertheless an impressive list of achievements

Other, less generous, commentators might try to pin inflation on him, as Pierre Poilievre does, but they know in their hearts that it was not due to specific Trudeau policies (the rest of the world also experienced the same thing). Necessary pandemic stimulus, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, global supply chain problems - there are many elements to the spike in inflation (now largely under control after central bank interventions), but Justin Trudeau is not personally responsible for the fact that things cost more now than they did a few years ago.

Nor is the country "broken" after 9 years of Trudeau, as Poilievre has managed to persuade many Canadians. Canada actually came through a particularly challenging time in pretty good shape, all things considered, and better than many other countries. I don't think Poilievre could have done much better, however much he blusters.

Immigration? Trudeau has always been gung-ho on immigration, and indeed it has been our saving grace in the face of a naturally-shrinking population, whatever the Conservatives might tell you. Maybe the temporary foreign workers program and the international student population has been mismanaged and ballooned out of control, but large cuts to immigration to pacify Conservative xenophobes is not the solution.

And all those scandals? They don't really amount to a hill of beans in the scheme of things. If youthful blackface, the SNC Lavalin/Jody Wilson-Raybould and WE charity pseudo-scandals, and holidaying with the Aga Khan is as bad as it gets, things could be much worse. We Canadians tend to agonize over these things.

So, yes, Trudeau should have resigned much earlier, for the good of the country he claims to love so much; like so many other leaders, he overstayed his welcome. But his administration has been far from disastrous, and he has achieved much that he - and the country - can be proud of. Just watch Pierre Poilievre try his damnedest to undo as much of it as possible.

Monday, January 06, 2025

Trudeau finally announces resignation - much too late to be helpful

So, finally, Justin Trudeau has announced that he will resign his position as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, and therefore as Prime Minster of the country.

After months of pressure from his own caucus, who see his unpopularity as a millstone around the Liberal Party's neck (and a hindrance to their own re-election chances), he has done with his "reflecting on his future", and concluded that he has none. 

Supposedly, he wanted to make the announcement before the Liberal caucus meeting later this week so that it would look like he resigned on his own terms, and was not pushed out by disgruntled members of his own party. Except that everyone already knows he was - his caucus has made no secret of their feelings for many months now.

Unfortunately, his resignation comes much too late. Everyone else except Trudeau knew that he should have gone a year ago. The Liberals are now 25% behind the Conservatives in the polls and, although a replacement for Trudeau might help that a bit, there is no way they can make up much ground before an election is called, which will come just as soon as the Conservatives (and the NDP for that matter) get another chance to engineer a confidence vote.

However, that won't happen until the end of March at the earliest, because Trudeau also prorogued Parliament until March 24th. All parliamentary activity, from the progress of existing bills to committee work to in-house debate, will therefore cease for the next two-and-a-half months. Much important legislation in progress is now dead in the water, including a bill to ensure clean drinking water in Indigenous reserves, and a federal tax credit to support clean energy investment by provincial power utilities and Indigenous corporations, among others.

And, of course, there will be no confidence votes either. This will buy the Liberals some time to elect a new leader (maybe - that would be a record short period for choosing a new party leader). But it will also mean that the country is rudderless and unprepared for the accession of Donald Trump in the USA on January 20th, and any wacko politics he introduces in his first few weeks. And there will be many, not least the potential imposition of a 25% tariff on all Canadian imports, as Trump has repeatedly threatened.

How will we deal with that? Do we have to wait until April for a Canadian response? If Trudeau had resigned a year ago, when the writing was already on the wall, a new leader could be already in place and ready to deal with anything that America throws at us. Instead, we are going to end up with Poilievre here (eventually) and Trump there, a perfect storm of populist craziness.

And, in the meantime, as Trump assumes almost unlimited power in America, with Canada apparently firmly in his sights, we have ... nothing. No Prime Minister, no functioning government, and a bunch of cabinet ministers squabbling among themselves over who should replace Trudeau, with the added wildcard of potential replacements possibly having to resign their cabinet positions in order to even stand. 

Trudeau, in his hubris, has thrown his party, the country, and all those "hard-working Canadians" he professes to love so much, under the bus. He should have resigned a year ago, but not now. If anything, it would have been better for him to stay on than to land us in this predicament at this particular juncture. If only he could have taken a leaf out of New Zealand's Jacinta Ardern's book. Oh, Canada!

An unremarkable champion

The "sport" of darts has always been popular in Britain, partly because, historically, it's something that Brits have actually been able to win at. It's never been a "cool" sport though, and newly-crowned (British) world champion Luke Littler is the epitome of uncool.

He may look about 30 but, at 17 years old, Littler is not even old enough to drink in a pub. While littler [sic] than some past champions, he is still a big guy with that pallid, unhealthy, overweight look that darts champions have always rocked. And he is painfully awkward in interviews.

When I think back to the great (British) darts champions from when I was growing up in England - men like Erik Bristow ("The Craft Cockney"), John Lowe, John Wilson ("Jockey"), Leighton Rees, Phil Taylor ("The Power") - they were larger-than-life characters, oozing not exactly charm but rather a kind of sleazy, world-weary notoriety. (They were all Brits back then, too; it was only in the 1990s that the Dutch, Australians and Canadians began to compete at the top levels.)

Littler, though, just comes across as the guy next door, a totally unremarkable Mr. Average, so uncool he's cool again. His nickname "Luke the Nuke" seems more like sarcasm than a reflection of his personality. But he sure throws a mean darts game. And, at 17, he has decades ahead in which to establish himself as the GOAT.