Tuesday, May 27, 2025

How globalization produces our drugs

I've already kvetched about some of the ridiculous (and extremely carbon-intensive) supply chains that are coming to light as a result of all the talk and discussion about US tariffs. Well, a new report shows the journey of a single anti-anxiety drug as it makes its way across the globe, sometimes as long as 52,000 km, en route to a Canadian consumer. The report follows the production of clonazepam, a common anxiety and insomnia drug, but it could have been any drug. 

The active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) start their journey in Guangzhou and Hangzhou in China, before being shipped to Shanghai and then Mumbai and Bangalore in India. The excipients (substances added to stabilize and help patients' bodies absorb the APIs) are produced separately in China, before being sent to India or Germany to be combined with the API into tablets. The tablets are then shipped to New Jersey in the USA to be tested and then to Tennessee to be repacked into smaller bottles. From there, they are transported to a distribution centre in the Greater Toronto Area to be distributed to Vancouver, Winnipeg, or wherever needed. The total journey can be as much a 52,000 kilometers (and God knows how much in carbon emissions).



Wow.

Of course, this raises all sorts of questions. Why can the pills not be repacked in New Jersey rather than going all the way to Tennessee? In fact, why can't the testing and repacking all be done in Toronto? Or in Germany, or India, or in China for that matter? In fact, why can't the whole process be done in China, or in India, or even in Canada?

I'm sure the initial ingredients are probably available in Canada, and there is no compelling reason that I can see for any part of the process to be carried out anywhere else. So, why don't we produce our own drugs? Sure, Canadian labour is way more expensive than Chinese or Indian labour, but think of the savings in transportation, fuel, time, and carbon emissions.

The more I find it about how the whole globalized capitalism system the works, the more skeptical and mistrustful I become.

Monday, May 26, 2025

The strange story of the Lumbees

Here's a developing story I have managed to miss until now. Unfortunately, it involves Donald Trump, but that can't be helped.

It seems that, for whatever reason, Trump has taken on the plight of the Lumbees, a native American tribe from North Carolina, which Trump has vowed to help become federally recognized, with all the financial and other benefits that come with that designation, including healthcare, education and economic development. In fact, one of his very first executive orders was to press the Department of the Interior to find a way to make that happen.

The 55,000 strong Lumbee nation has been recognized in North Carolina for over a hunded years, but federal recognition involves a very specific set of requirements including proving that their nation existed before the founding of the USA, that they have been recognized as Native since at least 1900, that they have operated as an "autonomous entitiy", and that they have genealogies that demonstrate Native heritage and ancestry from previously recognized tribes.

These are quite onerous requirements and, thus far, the Lumbees have not been able to fulfill them. In fact, strangely, there was even a 1956 federal act, the Lumbee Act, that specifically prohibits the US from having a federal relationship with the group. It gave them only limited recognition, and specifically prohibited them from receiving federal benefits. I have no idea why.

Now, Trump is asking the DoI to find a way round the Office of Federal Acknowledgement (OFA) that has always had responsibility for federal recognition of Native groups, and that has officially recognized over 570 Native tribes across America over the years. And this has other Native groups worried. 

They worry that, by circumventing the OFA, a bad precedent for future tribal recognition will be set, and that it will water down the stringent requirements that have been in force up until now. They argue that the Lumbees have tried repeatedly to attach themselves to various historical tribal and non-tribal names in order to identify themselves, but without success, meaning that they remain "not necessarily Native". 

Apparently there are many other groups out there diligently trying to prove their indigeneity, and this move by Trump could open up a real can of worms, and ppotentially even pit one Native group against another. Futhermore, it is very unlikely that the pot of money devoted to the country's Native tribes will grow if more tribes are recognized, so the same money will be spread more thinly around more groups (another reason why existing Native tribes are suspicious of this new process). In fact, it surprises me that this system has not already foumd itself facing the keen axe of Trump or the much-hated Department of Government Efficiency.

Of course, the only reason Trump is even listening to these people is for their votes (as reflected in the voting trends of recent elections): he doesn't care about their Native heritage. The whole controversy is leading to a politicization of Native issues. And we know that Trump thrives on both politicization and controversy.

Thursday, May 22, 2025

How does Trump get Republicans to tow the line?

The Trump administration's horrible and ridiculously-named One Big Beautifully Bill Act has passed in the House of Representatives by the slimmest of margins, 215-214. This means that all the Democrats and a couple of Republicans voted against it, and several clearly didn't vote at all for whatever reason (the House is currently made up of 220 Republicans and 212 Democrats, with 3 seats vacant - why?)

The mega omnibus bill enacts over a trillion dollars in tax cuts, predominantly benefitting higher earners, and introduces various new tax write-offs, but only during the period of Trump's presidency. It puts significantly more money into detention faculities and deportation operations for Trump's anti-immigration agenda. It restricts the ability of federal courts to put restraining order and injunctions on illegal government activities. It slashes Medicaid (which provides healthcare to poor and disabled Americans) and the SNAP program ("food stamps", which help poor people afford groceries). It phases out green energy and EV tax incentives introduced by Joe Biden. And it increases the US governments debt limit, because all those tax cuts will hugely impact the national debt. It may be big, but wow, is it ugly.

The bill only passed in the House at all because of a desperate last-minute high-pressure push by both Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, who says he prayed for it. Natch. But it made me wonder what form those last minute negotiations took.

Some of the Republicans who objected to the bill wanted it toned down because of the hit that poorer working people would take, while some wanted it made even more radical, with even bigger cuts to Medicaid, for example. So, how do you corral these disparate and opposing views?

I'm pretty sure it doesn't happen by an earnest discussion of policy issues. I would imagine it involves making deals - quid pro quo - or possibly through veiled or not-so-veiled threats. That seems more like the Trump way.

Trump, of course, is heralding it as a major victory. But surely a true victory would have been a 220-212 vote (in a Congress where votes tend to run completely along party lines, and free thinking is actively discouraged). Even the Rules Committee that put forward the Bill vote barely managed to squeeze it through. In the scheme of things, then, given the way the system works, this is actually very unpopular bill, even among members of Congress.

The bill still has to go before the Senate to be finally passed. It is expected to get a bumpy ride there too, and several changes are expected to be proposed. I'm sure Trump will make sure it gets through, unpopular or not, but just how that happens is not much to do with democracy.

Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Generations are getting shorter (and more meaningless)

There's a fun article in the Globe and Mail about all the named generations we seem to attach so much significance to these days, about how the names came about, how they have come to define certain age groups, and ultimately how random and pointless they are.

First, a quick summary for those who are not keeping up:

  • Greatest Generation: born 1901 to 1927.
  • Silent Generation: 1928 to 1945.
  • Baby Boomers: 1946 to 1964.
  • Gen X: 1965 to 1980.
  • Gen Y (Millennials): 1981 to 1996.
  • Gen Z: 1997 to 2010.
  • Gen Alpha: 2011 to 2024.
  • Gen Beta: 2025 to 2039.

It used to be the case that we looked at older generations, after the fact, and tried to attribute some social/economic/technological generalizations to them. Thus, the Baby Boomers were an optimistic post-war generation that felt emboldened to have lots of kids, relatively speaking. That kind of made sense.

Generation X was just a generation that happened to follow the Baby Boomers ("a note to follow 'soh'"?), named after a novel by Canadian writer Douglas Coupland, whose jaded, cynical characters came to identify and stereotype the generation, whatever the actual reality.

And from there, Y, Z, Alpha and Beta just flowed automatically, in a lazy progression of increasingly meaningless labels. For no good reason, Gen Y also has a separate nickname, "Millennials", so named because the cohort would graduate around the turn of the millennium, as though that has any deep significance.

These generations are not really defined by any social, economic or technological parameters, though. Rather, sociologists and social media influencers try to impose characteristics on them, with varying levels of success, on the assumption that such generalizations are useful or significant, and that each cohort is sufficiently different in some way from preceding generations.

Interestingly, generations are now being named and defined in advance. Generation Beta already exists, even though just a few babies have been born into it since the start of this year, and their characters and defining circumstances are far from apparent yet. There is now a whole industry of demographers, market researchers and influencers, all clamouring to be the ones to define generations in the same way as Douglas Coupland (accidentally) did for Gen X, and Strauss and Howe did for Millennials.

It also seems that generations are getting shorter and shorter. While the Greatest Generation spanned 27 years, the Silent Generation 18 years, and  the Baby Boomers 19 years, Gen X and Y were only 16 years long. Gen Z, Alpha and Beta, though, are only 14 years each, which suggests that they are expected to procreate a new generation by age 14!

It's a tongue-in-cheek article, and the generations identified are clearly only generalized guides, and their timings are mere conventions and open to debate. They are not designed to be taken too seriously, except maybe by marketers. But it brings up some interesting points about how we love to compartmentalize and categorize, however meaningless the categories may actually be.

Monday, May 19, 2025

The Dark Enlightenment is coming

It's a phrase I haven't really come across before, but it's out there and it's increasing in its influence. 

"Dark Enlightenment" emerged in the late 2000s in the murkier reaches of Silicon Valley, California, and its two main "intellectual" leaders are American software engineer Curtis Yarwin and British philosopher Nick Land. It's a far-right philosophical movement that explicitly rejects most of the core principles of the 17th/18th century Enlightenment movement in Europe, including democracy, egalitarianism and universal liberty. 

Instead, it espouses hierarchical,  authoritarian systems of governance, enabled by technological innovation. Thus, according to Dark Enlightenment, a president should assume complete, monarch-like executive authority, and work to completely dismantle government systems and tear down institutions like the media, the civil service and academia. Sound faniliar?

As you might guess, then, Dark Enlightenment is seeing growing influence among certain segments of the American elite. Tech billionaire Peter Thiel, venture capitalist Marc Andreesen, US Vice President JD Vance, hard-right political strategist Steve Bannon, and, yes, Elon Musk, are all devotees. And Mr. Yarvin was a guest of honour at Donald Trump's presidential inauguration ball in January. If the Trunp administration can be said to have any kind of philosophy other than just selfishness, this, then, is it.

The name itself is interesting, isn't it, at least from a psychological perspective. Democracy is still asssociated with light and good, authoritarianism with darkness and evil. These people, though, still want to flirt with the darkness and the evil ("go over to the dark side"?), but they don't want to be seen as going full dark ("Endarkenment"? "The Darkening"?), so they end up with an oxymoron like Dark Enlightenment. Or maybe they think that's clever?

It's a pretty scary "philosophy", but expect it to be increasingly mainstream in the coming years, particularly in the USA.

Friday, May 16, 2025

Maple Leafs are in improbable territory again

We're deep in hockey play-off season and, as usual, the Toronto Maple Leafs are deep in a hole and deep in controversy.

In recent years, they have had a good team, or at least a team of good players, but they never seem to make any headway when the playoffs come around. This year they easily topped the Eastern Conference, and relatively easily won their first round series against the Ottawa Senators.

In the second round, though, they squandered a 2-0 early series lead over the Florida Panthers, losing three straight, the last game by an embarrassing 6-1 margin at home. The further they go, the worse they seem to get. In the last game, they seemed to move sluggishly, lost most one-on-one battles on the boards, turned over the puck repeatedly, and had hardly any shots on goal.

As usual, the worst culprits were their "best" (i.e. most expensive) players, the ones that contributed so much during the regular season - Marner, Matthews, Tavares. (Matthews has underperformed all season and must be injured, I would say.) Nielander and Knies still seem to have a bit of energy about them at this point, and, to be fair, Joseph Woll is just the back-up goalie after star performer Stolarz was taken out of the series with an egregious hit. So, it's hard to blame him but, nevertheless, the Maple Leafs' goaltending challenges persist. And the fans? Well, you know how they're reacting, and that doesn't help.

All of this to say: I don't understand how this keeps happening every year. It's almost suspicious. I don't mean in a "curse" way; I don't believe in that stuff. But is it possible that there is some underhand skullduggery going on? Some sort of collusion? Some illegal bending of the betting rules? Might some members of the team be deliberately underperforming?

I know it seems improbable but as Sherlock Holmes says, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth".

UPDATE

Well, it just goes to show you shouldn't believe conspiracy theories, especially not your own personal conspiracy theories.

In Game 6 of the Florida Panthers series, the Toronto Maple Leafs of the first two games were back, and they won 2-0, forcing a Game 7. So, the dream lives on *sigh* .

And the scorer of that all-important first goal? Perennial playoff under-performer Auston Matthews, assisted by perennial playoff under-performer Mitch Marner. I think they just do it to spite me.

Of course, it could just be a way of extending the fix even further, but I don't know any more. An alternative interpretation might be that the Boys in Blue read my blog, realized what they were doing wrong, and pivoted accordingly,. But I'm not sold on that theory either.

Nevertheless, an exasperatingly inconsistent team, and it makes them so hard to support.

UPDATE UPDATE

Well, it was just a mirage, and now we are back where expected to be. It's comforting in a way, comforting but depressing.

Toronto lost Game 7 - again - to the Panthers. No, they were decimated, crushed. It was Game 5 all over again. Apart from a brief interlude (the second half of the first period), presumably designed just to taunt us, they were slower, less accurate, less aggressive - LESS ENGAGED - than Florida, who skated rings around the Leafs, outshot them 34-20, and outscored them 6-1. This was Toronto's seventh consecutive loss in a winner-take-all playoff game. Hmm...

This may have been Toronto's last best shot at a Stanley Cup for a while. Those skillful, expensive players are almost certainly going to be moving on, hopefully to be replaced by younger, less entitled, more hungry talents.

And for the long-suffering fans? Well, it's business as usual. Meanwhile, the conspiracy theory is looking pretty solid to me.

Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Trump accepting a present of any kind from a foreign state is unconstitutional

I'm intrigued to see how US President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bindi get out of this one.

Trump is keen to accept the innocent "present" of a $400 million jumbo jet from the Qatari government, a veritable "palace in the sky",  by all accounts. The way he tells it, "only a FOOL would not accept this gift", telling an ABC journalist she should be "embarrassed" to even question it.

The optics, of course, are horrible, but Trump doesn't care about optics. A more pressing problem is, it's immoral and illegal. Now, neither of those things have ever worried Trump before either, but occasionally the legal part has come back to bite him. A quick look at the US Constitution makes it pretty clear. Article 1, Section 9 Clause 8 states: 

"No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any Present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or Foreign State." [my stress]

Some of the MAGA crowd are comparing it to the gift of the Statue of Liberty by France in 1886 - Trump, of course, reposted those tweets - but that gift was indeed approved by Congress. 

And that "palace in the sky"? It's a modified Boeing 747-8 (yes, an American plane), built in 2012, so not even close to being new. Apparently, the Qatari government has been trying to sell it for years, at least since 2020, to no avail. Plus, it would cost an absolute fortune to customize to meet the requirements to serve as Air Force One.

Who should be embarrassed now? Who's the FOOL now?

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Canadians are boycotting the US, but barely

As has been widely reported, a lot of Canadians are changing their US travel plans in protest over Trump's tariffs. Supposedly, there are fewer Canadians travelling south for shopping sprees and sports games and just general vacation purposes. But now we finally have some concrete figures. 

It seems like travel to the US by land has declined by about 34% since January, but travel by air has only declined 17%, according to a National Bank of Canada analysis. Statistics Canada confirms that air flights are down about 20% in April 2025 compared to April 2024.

Hmm. I actually expected it to be more. It seems to mean that a lot of Canadians (e.g. snowbirds, tourists?) are still travelling down to the States just like usual. That's disappointing.

White Afrikaner "refugees" land in the USA

One of the stupider things that Donald Trump and his willing administration have wrought in the few hectic months since January is the provision of a special flight from South Africa for White Afrikaner "refugees".

59 (49 according to some sources) pasty White people arrived in Washington yesterday on a specially-chartered plane with a capacity of 200 (I guess take-up was not quite what Trump anticipated). These people are supposedly the victims of "racial discrimination" and even "genocide" by the Black majority South African government, about which Trump has a particular bee in his bonnet. Presumably, his buddy, White South African Elon Musk has had a word with him.

These comfortable middle-class folk were given special dispensation to emigrate to the USA as refugees, even though all other refugee admissions into the US have been summarily halted by the Trump administration, including those from war zones. Indeed, Trump is now talking about giving the South Africans automatic citizenship. Hell, we may see some of them joining his cabinet!

Of course, there is no genocide of White farmers happening; this is just a White Supremacist myth being propagated for political reasons. 60 White farmers a day are not being killed, as is claimed; the reality is more like 50 farmers a year, Black and White, in a country that sees over 20,000 murders every year, and where Black people make up 81% of the population but own about 4% of its land. On the other hand, Whites make up just 7% of the population, but own about half of South Africa's farmland. Yes, there has been government redistribution of land to the majority Black population after decades of apartheid inequality, but no arbitrary seizures or expropriation of private property

Many Afrikaners see Trump's offer as merely a PR exercise, and look on those accepting the offer as "opportunists" and "sell-outs". South African President Cyril Ramaphosa called the emigrants "cowards" and warned "they'll be back soon". White Afrikaner farmers themselves reject the notion that there is some genocide going on, or that White Afrikaners want to leave the country. And that photo of thousands of white crosses that Trump ambushed Ramaphosa with in their prime-time Oval Office "interview"? it was actually a temporary symbolic tableau to commemorate the murder of two individuals, not the burial site of thousands, according to the man who built it. Not that Trump would care about the truth behind it - his point has already been made.

Trump, then, has drunk the White Supremacist Koolaid, and is acting on it in his usual unthinking, precipitate way. This may not be the worst thing Trump 2.0 is engaged in right now, but it ranks up there. (The list of dangerous, damaging and downright illegal actions he has embarked on - from firing huge swaths of the federal workforce to gutting environmental protections to interfering in the oversight of universities to hamstringing the ability of unions to represent workers to establishing a strategic bitcoin reserve to attacks on immigration and sanctuary cities to making independent regulators accountable to the White House to weakening anti-corruption laws to removals of all mentions and implementations of DEI and climate change policies to dismantling the Department of Education to withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, UNWRA, WHO and other international organizations - is becoming hard to keep track of. Here is just a partial list.)

While most of the media's attention is focussed on the tariffs nonsense, all of this egregious stuff is happening in the background. In fact, that is my personal theory, that the tariffs, which are gradually being walked back anyway, are a smokescreen for all the other stuff that the US would rather not have scrutinized too closely.

Monday, May 12, 2025

Ayami Sato first woman to play on a professional Canadian men's baseball team

Kudos to Toronto for signing up - and actually playing - the first women to play for a professional men's baseball team in Canada. 

Just so you know, this was not the Toronto Blue Jays in Major League Baseball, mark you, but the Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball Club, the rather confusingly-named team in the Intercounty Baseball League.

Ayami Sato is widely regarded as the best female pitcher in the world, and is a six-time Women's Baseball World Cup champion with Japan. She struck out one and did not allow anyone on base in the first two innings of the Maple Leafs game against the Kitchener Panthers yesterday. The Leafs ultimately lost the game 6-5.

This is maybe not on the scale of Jackie Robinson's first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 (the first Black man to play in Major League Baseball), but it is nevertheless a pretty big step, and an inspiration for thousands of young Canadian girls who idolize Sato.


Every vote counts - we have proof!

Never scoff again when someone tells you that every vote counts. 

A recount in the Montreal area riding of Terrebonne yielded an almost unbelievable result: after the initial count found that the Bloc Québécois has won the riding by an ultra-slim margin of 44 votes, a recount found that, in fact, the Liberals scraped in by just one single vote

After the recount, Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné of the Bloc garnered 23,351 votes, while Liberal Tatiana Auguste registered 23,352, the closest result in recorded history. The swing gives the Liberals 170 seats in parliament, still two short of a majority.

In fact, this riding has already seen an earlier flip: on election night, the seat was initally given to August by 35 votes. It swung to Sinclair-Desgagné by 44 votes after a standard validation process.

The recount is a process that automatically clicks in when a result is within 0.01% of the total votes, considered the margin of potential error. Three other judicial recounts are underway in other close calls, but none of them give the Liberals a path to a majority.

This would probably have caused riots in the USA, so it's a testament to the robustness of the Canadian system that the revised result (and the recount itself) has been accepted with good grace. I wonder how Ms. Sinclair-Desgagnè is feeling today, though?

UPDATE

Terrebonne is not finished with its controversy yet. That single vote lead? It may just have disappeared. Emmanuelle Bossé, a voter in the riding has come forward to say that her mail-in ballot - for the Bloc Québécois, of course - was returned to her as undelivered, apparently because of an incorrect postal code on the envelope's pre-printed address.

So, in a riding with over 60,000 voters, the Terrebonne election looks to be dead heat. Elections Canada is still figuring what to do - this has never happened before - but a whole new election in the riding may be in prospect.

What occurs to me, though, is: was Ms. Bossé the only person in the riding to use a mail-in ballot? Were other mail-in ballots sent with the correct pre-printed address? How could just one pre-printed envelope be wrong? Elections Canada says this was the only such incident it was aware of. Stranger and stranger...

Sunday, May 11, 2025

Alberta is rich, so why are they still whining?

I have never understood Alberta's vociferous and ongoing complaint that they are being unfairly targeted by Canada's equalization system.

Equalization was brought in to provide "reasonably comparable level of public services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation", i.e. to ensure that all Canadians benefit from all of Canada's advantages, and that those provinces that are richer (through accidents of geography, geology, etc) subsidize those that are poorer. It's not a perfect system, but it's surely a laudable goal.

Intra-provincial equalization payments are calculated according to a formula and, while you might quibble about some of the details, it is broadly designed to make sure that there are no egregiously "have-not" provinces, through no fault of their own. Even Alberta received equalization payments back in the 1950s and 1960s, when it qualified as a "have-not" province, but it has been a "have" province since 1964 due to its oil revenues.

But the big thing is, equalization is a federal program. The government of Alberta has not paid over a single cent to any other province, despite what Danielle Smith implies; all equalization payments come from federal coffers through federal taxes. If Albertans (as opposed to Alberta) can be said to have paid more than residents of other provinces, that is only insofar as Albertans have higher incomes than the national average. This doesn't make it unfair, except in the eyes of Danielle Smith and the Alberta First crowd.

Because the bottom lime is: Alberta is a rich province, both in absolute GDP and particularly in per capita terms. The province's own economic dashboard admits - nay, boasts - as much. They should expect to be paying more than Nova Scotia or Manitoba. They are not struggling, they are not unfairly treated. They are living in La La Land compared to most Canadians. And the rest of Canada is pretty sick of their constant whining.

Friday, May 09, 2025

Did UK get a good trade deal with USA?

Surprisingly, both for them and for the rest of the world, the UK became the first country to agree a tariff and trade deal with Donald Trump's USA.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been waxing lyrical about the deal, calling it "fantastic" and "historic". and even the BBC seems to think it a good deal and a "significant achievement" (for Starmer at least, even if not for the UK). 

Others, however, are not so sure. The Independent calls it "lipstick on a pig", and The Guardian is equally, well, guarded, likening it to "a bit part in Trump the Musical".

In some ways, a deal with the UK was low-hanging fruit for the Trump administration. For one thing, the US actually has a small surplus in its trade with the UK, which can therefore hardly be said to be taking advantage of the US. And the UK is desperate for a deal with pretty much ANYONE since leaving the EU and is therefore willing not to drive too hard a bargain. (Trump is also quite desperate for a deal, to make his wacko tariff policy look a little less dismal.) Plus, Starmer needs a win of any sort after a rather disastrous local council election.

Starmer kept up the deluge of flattery he has employed since he started dealing with Trump, which arguably is the only way to make a deal with the man, however much it may pain the flatterer. But he received some flattery back too. When Trump himself starts to compliment you, it's probably time to worry.

Anyway, what Starmer ended up with is a deal that leaves the UK only slightly worse off than before: a reduction on the 25% steel and aluminum tariffs, and a decrease on tariffs on cars from 25% to 10%, although only up to a certain quota, and still much higher than the previous 2.5% tariff. The deal increased UK access to US ethanol and beef (although why the UK wants US beef, laden with growth hormones as it is, is not clear). The US, for its part, wanted something on pharmaceuticals and technology and succeeded in that, although exactly what remains to be negotiated. The blanket 10% tariff on most UK goods entering the USA remains, though. This compares with an average tariff in 2023, for example. of just 3.3%.

So, even with its so-called "special relationship" with America, Britain still did not manage to get all the tariffs dropped, not even close. And, remember, this is not really a trade treaty at all, not like the recently-concluded free trade deal between India and the UK (which would require Congress' approval, and a lot more time). All this is happening outside of the official international trade channels, and it's not clear whether it needs to be approved by Congress or not (or whether Congress would in fact approve it). The deal, as even Trump admits, is not yet finalized, despite all the song and dance.

Being first to go is not always a good ploy. Other countries are certain to be deconstructing and analysing this deal, in an attempt to learn where points were gained and lost in the game. Because that's what this has turned into, a pretty high-stakes game. 

The UK is a much smaller trading partner with America than Canada, but this whole process gives a good idea of what to expect in future negotiations.

Actually, America does need Canada

Maybe it goes without saying, but a lot of the stuff Donald Trump says about Canada and Canadian-American trade is a load of cobblers. But if there's one thing that really gets my goat, it's his claim that America doesn't need Canadian goods. It doesn't need our oil, it doesn't need our cars, it doesn't need our lumber, etc, etc. "We don't need anything they have", he says, repeatedly.

If that were true, then why do American companies import $421 billion of good from Canada every year (2024 figure). The top few categories are: fuel, oil and derivatives; vehicles and auto parts; machinery, nuclear reactors and boilers; unspecified commodities; plastics; wood and wood products; aluminum; electrical equipment; aircraft and spacecraft(!); etc.

America could try doing without us, and that is Trump's stated goal, but it would be very tough.

New American Pope - what should we expect?

Robert Prevost, an American, is now Pope Leo XIV. He was born in Chicago, to parents of Spanish and French-Italian descent, but has spent most of his working life as a missionary in Peru and as a functionary and insider  in the Vatican, so he's actually not THAT American. An Italian newspaper calls him "the least American" of the US cardinals.

The significance of his Americanism is lost on no-one (including Donald Trump, who was quick to claim him as one of his own), although he has already proved himself critical of some of Trump's recent actions (including the deportations of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to an El Salvador jail, against a court order), and has specifically spoken about against JD Vance's "Catholic" justification of the same.

Indeed, some of the MAGA crowd are deeply suspicious of the new Pope. MAGA influencer Laura Loomer, not known for pulling her punches (or for common sense or truthfulness) calls Leo "anti-Trump, anti-MAGA, pro-open border, and a total Marxist like Pope Francis". Ryan Selkis calls him a "new woke pope".

His adoption of the name Leo, too, may or may not be significant. The previous Leo, Pope Leo XIII, who was around over a century ago, railed against the American "heracy" of the time, as he saw it, as they were attempting to align American politcal values and cultural ethos with traditional Roman Catholic tenets 3and historical practices. Sound familiar? Leo XIII was also known, ahead of his time, for his concern for workers and social issues, and his criticism of both laissez-faire capitalism and state-centric socialism. Maybe the new Pope sees himself as carrying on that work?

Anyway, new Pope. Should we be excited? Meh, probably not. Leo XIV came up through the Augustinian order, and he was made a cardinal by his predecessor Francis, so it seems likely that he will continue Francis' pastoral and slightly radical trajectory. But, as I have argued earlier, Popes these days are not that influential in the wider world, and we shouldn't really expect any concrete impacts on the world as a whole. 

Thursday, May 08, 2025

World Junior Hockey players trial will help define "consent"

The ongoing trial of five members of the 2018 Canadian World Junior Hockey team is likely to be a watershed case in what constitutes consent and what constitutes sexual assault.

It is a particularly important case because the defendant, known as EM, then an awkward 20-year old university student, said and did some things that might have been construed as providing consent for the group sex that ensued. She was much the worse for alcohol, as were the young men, and admitted that she may have appeared permissive and compliant during the incident, even taking on the persona of a "porn star", but that she saw that as a kind of coping mechanism "just to get through" the ordeal. She has also testified that she tried to leave the room several times, sometimws in tears, but was persuaded, although not forced, to stay. 

There is apparently even video evidence of her saying that "it was all consensual" and that she "enjoyed it", although it is still not clear whether the video will be allowed as evidence.

But throughout the extended incident, she says that "I felt like I had no control", and was on "autopilot", almost separated from her body. She did what she did because she felt like she had no choice. Plus, she was so inebriated that she says, "I don't recall how I was acting", and "I don't know exactly what what I was doing". She was not even entirely sure she could identify which men were involved, because they "all looked the same" to her, and she actively misidentified a couple of them.

EM has a whole load more cross-examination to go through, having her credibility questioned, and I really don't envy her. (Court proceedings ended early yesterday, after EM broke down in tears several times.) I'm also glad I'm not on the jury. But the outcome of the trial will create an important precedent on what consent really means, and how much latitude women should be allowed in how they express it (or don't).

Wednesday, May 07, 2025

Where conflicts are concerned, don't believe everything (anything?) you see online

Deutsche Welle (DW) does a good job of fact-checking some of the more lurid political claims doing the rounds of the world's social media. Most recently it has looked into the videos being circulated by both Pakistan and India about their growing military spat over incursions into  and retailations over, Indian-held Kashmir.

Perhaps not surprisingly, DW concludes that almost all of the video propaganda being promoted by both sides is in fact false. 

For example, footage purporting to show Indian missiles raining down on Pakistan, shared at least 5 million times by outraged viewers, was in fact taken over 7 months ago and actually shows Iranian missiles hitting Israel. A picture showing a wrecked Fench-designed Rafale fighter plane was indeed Pakistani, but actually shows a Mirage 5 plane that crashed during training exercises three weeks ago. In some cases, video of purported Indian air attacks actually turns out to be footage from a popular video game!

There's an awful lot of fake photos and videos out there on the Internet, particularly in this age of AI. Where a war is involved, everything gets amped up a notch or two further, to the extent that it's pretty hard to trust anything you see online unless it comes directly from a highly reputable source. And even then it pays to be pretty sceptical.

Thus begins another major armed conflict in a time of renewed conflicts across the world.

Tuesday, May 06, 2025

Danielle Smith is at her politicking again

I don't like to give Danielle Smith - and Alberta in general - any more attention than necessary. She tends to make my blood boil, which is not good for me medically. But she does keep making announcements that, well, make my blood boil.

The latest, in the aftermath of a federal election, in which "her" party failed to win but all but swept the board in Alberta and Saskatchewan, is more whining and victim-playing about how badly Alberta is being treated by the federal government (by which she means the rest of the country that voted them in). It just so happens that Ontario and Quebec have bigger populations, and so they often decide elections - that is not a flaw in democracy, that's the way it's supposed to work. And sometimes those large populations will vote overwhelmingly Conservative, just not this time.

Ms. Smith has a way of speaking that particularly grates, and which usually requires translation into the language that the rest of the country speaks. She is at pains to appear straight-talking and reasonable, but hides a barb behind almost every statement she makes.

For example, she talks of "hostile acts" from Ottawa, meaning policies that the rest of the country approves of, but that happens not to benefit Alberta, with its 20th-Century attitudes to oil and gas among other things (most things she says have a link to Alberta oil on some level). 

She says that Albertans are "deeply frustrated" at the election of another Liberal government, indeed that they are "crushed" by it. Well, maybe, but so probably are NDP voters, but you don't hear them whining in the same way. That's just the way democratic elections work: the party with the most seats gets to form a government. Does she want to change that system?

And she is still talking about "Alberta sovereignty within a united Canada", whatever that actually means, as she has for some time now, all while doing her level best to foment divisiveness and fanning the flames of an independence vote. How does that help United Canada? She tends to blame Ottawa (i.e. Liberals) for threatening national unity by their policies (i.e. the ones she happens not to agree with), but she is the one almost single-handedly destroying any national unity that may have existed with her words and her actions.

She says " we will no longer tolerate having our industries threatened and our resources landlocked by Ottawa". Furthermore, "Alberta didn't start this fight, but rest assured we will finish it". Fighting talk indeed. So what is she going to do about it?

Well, with that in mind, she has put forward Bill 54 that would make it easier for a potential secession referendum to be brought forward by Alberta citizens, lowering the threshold from 20% to 10% of voters. She says the timing of this, just after a Liberal election victory is coincidental. 

She is careful to to stress that SHE will not be the one to bring such a separation vote - in fact she says, in very clear language, that "I do not support Alberta separating from Canada" - but if enough Albertans want to, then so be it, what can she do? She even points out that polls suggest that most Albertans don't want to separate from Canada, but she is nevertheless doing everything she can behind the scenes to encourage it. She visibly bristled when a reporter suggested she was being disingenuous in these apparent contradictions.

So, there you have Danielle Smith. Firebrand activist? Principled statesperson? Sneaky backroom wheeler-dealer? You decide. Meanwhile, though, Alberta's economic credibility is taking a hit. Secession remains a highly implausible scenario, but the very fact that the government is even talking about it is enough to put the willies up current and potential investors.

Saturday, May 03, 2025

Australian election follows the Canadian trajectory

In an extraordinary parallel to the recent Canadian election, Australia has seen a dramatic late turn-around in their general election too.

Just as with Canada, the Australian Liberals (right of centre, despite the name) were expected to roll over the incumbent Labour Party (left of centre, and the equivalent of Canada's Liberal Party - confusing, eh?)

On the day, though, after a short election campaign totally dominated by Donald Trump and who is best positioned to deal with him, just as in Canada, Australia's Labour Party came through with a comfortable majority, despite the Liberals' apparent dominance in the polls just two months earlier (just as in Canada). Liberal leader, Peter Dutton, lost his own seat, just like Pierre Poilievre did in Canada. Like Poilievre, the  hard-line conservative Dutton was considered too close to Trump for comfort, the kiss of death in the current circumstances.

Quite a turn-around - just as in Canada. It seems like Donald Trump is doing a good job of scaring the world away from hard-right governments.

Germany classifies AfD as "extemist", and USA declares a diplomatic row

Germany's BfV domestic intelligence (spy) agency has officially labelled the country's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) political party as an "extremist" organization, publishing as evidence a 1,100-page report on the party's racist, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim profile, its activities in deliberately stirring up "irrational fears and hostility" towards individuals and groups, and its incitement to undermine democratic institutions.

This might not seem like a big deal, but the designation legally allows BfV to officially and unofficially monitor the organization, to recruit informants, and to intercept party communications. It open up the way to closer surveillance of the organization, even clandestine spying. Other political organizations classified as "extremist" in Germany include the far-right National Democratic Party, Islamic State and the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany.

Given that AfD is now one of Germany's major political parties, coming in second to the conservative coalition of Friedrich Merz in last February's elections, and even topping some current nationwide polls, the new "extremist" designation puts an unwelcome spotlight on the party and its machinations.

The AfD is predictably apoplectic at the announcement, calling it politically motivated and defamatory and "a blow against democracy". It has promised legal action, although it has already lost a court case in which it tried to challenge the BfV. 

Almost as predictably, that other right-wing extremist organization, the Trump administration in the USA, has condemned the move, setting off a major diplomatic row between the two countries. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the BfV's announcement "tyranny in disguise", and Vice President JD Vance called it the rebuilding of the Berlin Wall by the German establishment.

*Sigh* When America feels obliged to publicly support such illiberal, anti-democratic organizations as AfD as a knee-jerk reaction, how far down that road has it already travelled itself? Is there any way back?

CUSMA-compliant auto parts are to be exempt from US tariffs - wait, what?

In his latest tariff flip-flop, Donald Trump is now saying that the 25% tariff that is to apply to auto vehicles and parts imported from Canada into the USA will not actually apply to CUSMA-compliant auto parts.

This is seen - on this side of the border at least - as a major carveout and climb-down. But it raises the question: which auto parts are, and are not, covered by the Canada United States Mexico Agreement of 2018? Is it not ALL auto parts? (If not, why not?) I have not seen a simple guide to what this exemption actually means in concrete terms for the Trump tariffs.

Given that auto parts can cross the Canadian and US border several times during production, as we know, it would be a logistical nightmare to identify non-American components of cars and their various parts. If there is a further distinction between CUSMA-compliant and non-CUSMA-compliant parts, the task becomes even more onerous. Is anyone keeping track of the time, effort and cost of the extra admin involved?

The big auto companies are already responding to the imposition of the tariffs, even before they take effect. For example, GM is eliminating one shift at its Oshawa assembly plant, driven, it says, by soft demand and trade uncertainty, involving cuts of over 700 jobs. Does this take into account the latest tariff carveout? Who knows?

Talk about chaos and uncertainty! The announcements are coming so thick and fast that even the people most affected can't keep track if it all. What a mess!

Mental health system not to blame for Vancouver tragedy

After a Vancouver man drove his SUV into a crowded Filipino cultural festival earlier this week, killing 11 people and injuring scores more, there have been many pointed questions about why it happened and why it was allowed to happen and, more specifically, what role the man's mental illness played in the tragedy.

Adam Lo is an involuntary outpatient under the care of a Vancouver mental health team following a forced hospital stint in 2024. He suffers from schizophrenia, paranoia and delusions, and is considered at high risk for his mental health to decline, especially given his occasional refusal to take medications. 

More specifically, Mr. Lo, like thousands of others, has been on what is known as "extended leave", where he has been released from a treatment facility for supervised, mandatory care in the community. This means that his condition is severe enough to warrant forced treatment (e.g. mandatory medication injections), but not so severe that they must be held at a mental health facility. In this way, it is argued, he gets the treatment he needs, but without too much of an infringement of his civil liberties (hence, Mr. Lo still has a valid drivers license, for example).

Lo's Vancouver Coastal Health care team has commented that there was no change to his condition or his non-compliance with medications before the incident that might have warranted involuntary hospitalization. He seems to fit squarely into the parameters for extended leave, with nothing suggesting the need for enforced sequestering in a mental health facility. His act came out for the blue, with no possible way of predicting it.

Many people are understandably angry, and looking for answers (and preferably a scapegoat). But, however much people are looking for somewhere to lay blame for the tragedy, all indications are that Vancouver's mental health system was not to blame.

Friday, May 02, 2025

Poilievre is offered a safe Tory seat

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, whom many Tories seem to look on as the Second Coming (of something or other), was soundly beaten in his own riding of Carleton in last week's federal election, and by a Liberal political neophyte at that.

But so convinced are Conservatives in the man's value to the Party that they have prevailed on a long-time successful Tory MP to stand down and offer up his safe seat to Poilievre, who clearly cannot get himself elected any other way. 

It's an embarrassing climb-down for a party that has now lost to the Liberals in four consecutive elections. But Damien Kurek, who has easily won the Battle River-Crowfoot riding in Alberta since 2019, says he is more than happy to lend Poilievre his safe Tory seat. For he so loved his party that he gave his only begotten seat... If he'd had a sword handy, he would almost certainly have fallen on it.

"An unstoppable movement has grown under his leadership", quoth Kurek. "This is what's best for Canada, and is what's best for Battle River-Crowfoot". Well, except the movement just got stopped in its tracks in the last election, and Canada decided that the Liberals are best for it at the moment. How people get caught up in hype and propaganda!

This is a strange and embarrassing situation for Poilievre, although the man is not easily embarrassed. It's also a rather strange move for the Conservative Party, which lost the last election because (among other reasons) Poilievre is so unlikable, and because of his angry demeanour and tedious three-word slogans. Still, if that's what they want to do...

Poilievre is not humble man. "Sorry" or "regret" are not in his vocabulary. He has got to where he is today by being aggressive, acerbic and in-your-face; he does not do touchy-feely. It seems inconceivable to us outsiders that the Tories would even want to keep him as leader of the Party, especially given that his particular brand of divisive, populist politics has not yielded the results he promised, and he has brought the Conservatives no closer to power than Erin O'Toole and Andrew Scheer before him (arguably further away, given that the Liberals are now just a few seats short of a majority).

I wonder if this will play into the hands of the Liberals who are, as we speak, rumoured to be having talks with Conservative and NDP MPs with a view to getting a small handful of them to "cross the floor" to give the Liberals a majority in parliament.

And if Poilievre were to lose this by-election too? Well, wouldn't that be something?

Ukraine resources deal is morally very grey

I have mixed feelings about the recent minerals and resources deal struck between Ukraine and USA. But first, what's actually in the deal? 

What's significantly NOT in the deal is any mention of Ukraine paying back $350 billion in US wartime aid to Ukraine that Trump was insisting on when this was last publicly discussed (remember that embarrassing Oval Office interview streamed live to air for all the world to see). This, then, seems to have been a win for Ukraine, although of course Trump would never admit that publicly.

Specifically mentioned is that the deal should not hamper Ukraine's ambitions to join the EU. Ukraine already has a strategic partnership with the EU on raw materials, and the text of the deal acknowledges that and pledges that the US deal will not step on any European toes.

The wording of the deal is also distinctly more anti-Russian than the Trump administration usual employs (maybe the Trump-Putin bromance is petering out?) which will hearten Ukraine and its other allies. For example, for almost the first time, the deal calls out "Russia's full-scale invasion".

On the other hand, the deal as it stands also includes Ukraine's oil and gas, not just its strategically important rare earth minerals (in fact, Ukraine has hardly any rare earth minerals, certainly not as much as Trump thinks it does, but it does have significant reserves of natural gas, oil and coal - I guess someone explained that to him recently). This marks a step up from the US's previous ambitions, although the document states that the resources in question will technically stay "in Ukrainian ownership" (for what that's worth).

There are still no concrete security guarantees built into the deal, and technically the US could walk away from it at any time. Implicit in the agreement is the idea that the US would not want to walk away from it because it is in its own commercial interests. This is not a strong guarantee, but it may be the best that can be negotiated with this intransigent American administration. 

Of course, the payback for Ukraine for giving away a share of its precious mineral wealth, is a renewed commitment of military assistance from the US. However, this is not spelled out in detail, and it will probably not be on the scale of Joe Biden's previous commitments, even if it is the whole raison d'etre for the deal as far as Ukraine is concerned.

One interesting element of the agreement (or at least of an additional "technical" deal that is proposed to accompany it) is that, for its first ten years, the USA will forego its share of the proceeds, which will be fully invested in Ukraine's economy, either in new projects or reconstruction. This seems very generous and un-Trumplike, so let's see whether it gets included in the final deal.

So, the deal represents a strange hybrid of the expected cynical realpolitik from the Trump administration, and something altogether more humanitarian and unexpected. Of course, coming from Trump's America, I really would not trust it to come to fruition or be upheld without a bunch more last minute changes.

I'm also very unsure about this kind of hard-negotiation arm-twisting in order to provide something that was freely given for years under the previous administration. Equating Ukraine's existential issues with commercial transactions and "filthy lucre" seems morally reprehensible somehow. But you can see why a desperate Ukraine might be tempted to agree to it, when their very existence is on the line.

Doug Ford goes full Trump

Doug Ford has gone off on a rant again - he admits as much himself. Still smarting from an Ontario Supreme Court ruling that stops him from taking out a bunch of recently installed bike lanes in Toronto, which Mr. Ford finds inconvenient on his commute into Queen's Park, he has gone full Trump, painting the whole judicial system as full of "terrible, terrible, bleeding heart judges" who make decisions based on "ideology". 

This comes about a month after another Ontario judge ruled against Ford's ill-advised (and apparently illegal) plan to shut down all supervised drug consumption sites. So, maybe Ford's oversized ego is feeling a little bruised.

"I can't wait until they retire", he rants, "matter of fact, I'll pay them to retire early ... just get out of the system". He went further: "Let's start electing our judges, holding them accountable".

Of course, what Ford means is that he respectfully disagrees with their decisions, decisions made impartially on their own merits, based as they were on Canadian and Ontario case law and statutes. But that's a long way from what he actually said, and he overstepped his boundaries by a long chalk. Clearly, it is actually Ford who is acting on ideology. He is saying that these respected judges' considered decisions are wrong just because they don't jibe with his own political views.

And calling for American-style elected judges? - and we've seen how THAT is going - that is just beyond the pale. Maybe Ford was just having a bad, frustrating day, but a professional politician just doesn't say these things out loud, whatever they may say in the privacy of their own toilet. 

This was an unfortunate and embarrassing rant, and it even elicited a joint statement by Ontario's three chief justices, chastising Ford for his inappropriate outburst and defending an independent judiciary as "a cornerstone of our constitutional democracy", reminding Ford that "an independent judiciary protects the public, not just judges. It means a society governed by the rule of law."

For a guy who set himself up as a bulwark against the excesses of Donald Trump during the recent provincial election, he sure sounds like Donald Trump sometimes.