UCP's plan to gerrymander Alberta's electoral districts

Michelle Smith's United Conservative Party (UCP) continues unabashedly down the path blazed by Donald Trump's Republicans. This time they are pursuing what seems to be a textbook case of gerrymandering - manipulating electoral district boundaries for partisan advantage.

Electoral districts DO need to be changed from time to time as population numbers and densities change. In Alberta, as in other provinces, an independent committee exists to do just that. But when a majority of that committee announced that their analysis called for an increase to the number of seats in Calgary and Edmonton to account for increased populations in thise cities, the UCP objected. 

You see, the cities of Calgary and Edmonton are strongholds of the opposition NDP party, and increasing seats there would be to the advantage of the NDP and the disadvantage of the UCP, whose core support is in more rural parts of Alberta.

So, the governing UCP has passed a plan to select a committee to set up a new electoral district committee, which would be stacked with UCP members and would therefore be more amenable to UCP goals (i.e. continued power). The UCP's "alternative" electoral map would have more than a dozen new merged urban and rural ridings, which would effectively dilute the power of the urban vote in Alberta elections. The motion would also establish an expedited oversight process, which could see electoral boundaries changed without any need for public hearings.

By expressly rejecting the advice of the existing redistricting committee, and setting up this alternative committee, Smith has opened herself up to allegations of gerrymandering and anti-democratic behaviour. Former Alberta Premier Rachel Notley warns that the new committee and their proposed "alternative" election map could ensure a UCP super-majority for decades to come. She is sufficiently removed from day-to-day politics to call it what is is: cheating.

Certainly, such a bare-faced and undemocratic ("Trumpian") move is unprecedented in Canadian politics. It was only a matter of time to discover whether it would be Smith or Ontario Premier Ford who first ventured down that murky road.

Are Americans just bored with Trump?

It's no secret that Americans have had enough of Trump. Democrats, obviously, never wanted or liked him, but it's now becoming clear that even many Republicans are over him. Opinion polls show him to be more unpopular than ever. Even Tucker Carlson and his brother have come out publicly to apologize to the American public and to admit that they made a mistake in supporting and glorifying Trump.

So, what gives? It's taken them long enough, but even those Trump supporters who thought they really liked his folksy-but-confrontational approach are starting to realize that folksy-but-confrontational ALL THE TIME can be exhausting. People are fed up with the constant low-level anxiety, the whiplash from repeated flip-flops, the exhaustion from dealing with his constant outrage, hissy-fits, insults, exaggerations and lies. Essentially, people are just bored with Trump. If nothing else, they are bored with his poor many decisions. (I know I am.) Clowns can be amusing for a while, but they quickly pall.

And that's not even taking into account the realization that is starting to take hold in some disillusioned voters that all those higher prices, the disrupted and limping economy, and the possibly irreparable hit to America's reputation and international standing, are actually all due to Trump's failed and misguided policies. Call it political caveat emptor. 

Perhaps, the real surprise is that 30% or so of Americans are still willing to support him, although a good proportion of his base do not seem politically sophisticated enough to piece together what seems to so obvious to everyone else.

Is the Trump administration colluding in insider trading?

Throughout Donald Trump's second term, there have been many market-moving statements and announcement, more than in any other presidential term in living memory. Whether it is to do with the war in Iran, incursions into Venezuela, or just the never-ending series of announcements about tariffs early in his tenure, few (if any) presidents have made so many, and so consequential, public announcements that have had significant effects on the stock markets and resource prices. 

Often, they were just throwaway, late-night posts on Truth Social or other social media, but many of them were enough to send the already-jittery markets into a tailspin or a mysterious upsurge. Coincidence? I think not!

There is an increasing body of evidence that suggests that there was a suspicious surge in trading activity before many of these announcements, which has some commentators posing allegations of insider trading. There are many documented examples of traders betting millions of dollars on the exchanges just hours, or even minutes, before major policy announcements. The BBC details many such examples, and The Guardian has calculated that there may have been a least a billion dollars in suspiciously "perfectly-timed" trades, as well as online betting on platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi, during the Iran war alone. Notably, Donald Trump's own net worth has nearly doubled during his second term, which is only, lest we forget, just over a year old.

Insider trading - stock trading based on non-public information about a company or sector - is hightly illegal in America, as elsewhere. Some US senators have called for a probe into possibly insider trading during the height of the tariff nonsense. 

It is, however, notoriously difficult to prove such allegations, and the laws are very difficult to enforce. There is a strong chance that no-one will ever be prosecuted. Including, of course, Trump himself, and his family and close advisors.

Should (could?) Canada join the European Union?

I confess I hadn't really noticed it, but apparently  there is talk in some circles about what a good idea it would be for Canada to join the European Union (EU).

Wait, what? That's nuts! Well, yes, it is. 

Now, to be clear, this is not a full-blown movement. It's a few off-the-cuff comments by minor (or sometimes not-so-minor) members of the Finnish, German and French governments. The only not-so-minor Canadian who seems sold on the idea is Thomas Lucaszuk, a former Alberta cabinet minister, and he's pretty minor. But a recent Nanos poll suggests that nearly 58% of Canadians would be open to the idea.

Access to the world's second-largest economic bloc might be nice. But the implications of such a union would be stark. I know we are in the throes of a bad break-up with the USA, but to then look to throw in our lot with another behemoth would be the worst kind of rebound relationship. 

This is not just Canada joining the Eurovision Song Contest. Becoming part of the EU, would mean de facto rule from Brussels - a common trade and tariffs policy (including the renegotiation of all current trade treaties), a common foreign policy, a common agricultural policy, a common fiscal policy, possibly a common currency. We would be subject to European laws and regulations, from the environment to finance to labour laws. It would amount to an almost complete loss of sovereignty, at a time when we're just realizing how valuable that is.

Luckily, it's not going to happen. Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union reserves membership to "any European state", which, last time I looked, we are most definitely not. And, anyway, we already have access to European trade through the Canada-European Union Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) - not perfect access by any means, but still pretty good. The experience of negotiating even that agreement was fraught enough - there is no way that all 27 member states would vote to allow Canada into their club.

I'm not sure that the suggestion was all that serious, just the kind of thing politicians throw around to make a point. But we should probably be grateful for that. Make nice with Europe by all means - it is a pretty civilized and sensible organization in an increasingly dysfunctional world - but don't even consider throwing caution to the wind and joining as a full member. Even the Eurovision Song Contest is controversial enough.

Japanese PM gushes over Deep Purple

This is great. It turns out that Japan's first ever female Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, is a hard rock devotee and a super-fan of British band Deep Purple.

Takauchi is herself a keen (and apparently frenetic) rock drummer, and used to play in a Deep Purple tribute band. So, when she met up with DP drummer Ian Paice, over 50 years after DP's seminal 1972 album Made In Japan, Ms. Takaichi's reaction was precious: "You are my god", she gushed, not words you often hear from a Prime Minister. She added, "These days, when I fight with my husband, I drum to Burn and cast a curse on him". Er, OK, perhaps a little too much ioformation.

In the midst of trade wrangling with America, increasing tensions with China, and complaints about inflation and a sluggish economy, thoigh, what a breath of fresh air.

The achievements and costs of the US war in Iran

Trump, Hegseth & Co have been claiming overhelming victory since pretty much Day 1 of the US-Israeli war against Iran. I've lost count of the number of times both guys have claimed to have "obliterated" Iran's offensive and defensive capabilities, despite the fact that they continue, even now, bombing US allies and bases and even shooting down American aircraft.

Now Pakistan and China has come to their rescue by negotiating a two week ceasefire, giving Trump a much-needed potential way out after his wild, genocidal talk about "a whole civilization will die tonight". What little credibility Trump had is now shot, and his popularity at home has tanked even further.

So, this is perhaps not a bad juncture to stand back and assess exactly what Trump has achieved in Iran, and at what cost. Of course, the BBC has done my work for me.

America's goals on Iran have been a constantly moving target, depending who is talking, when, and the spin they want to impose. But preventing Iran for developing nuclear weapons was always near the top of the list. Thing is, Iran has hardly any nuclear weapon development anyway, and what agreements and negotiations there were have all been derailed by Trump himself and his bull-in-a-china-shop approach. Art of the deal, my ass! 

It is thought that Iran probably still has enriched uranium salted away, even after five weeks of war and the unilateral strikes in nuclear facilities last June, and most diplomats believe that it is just not possible to stop Iran's nuclear ambutions by brute force alone. And Iran remains just as defiant - perhaps even more so - about its independence and automomy as ever.

Regime change was one of the early American goals, although that aspect has been back-pedalled more  recently. Remember "keep protesting, help is on the way"? By taking out Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, all they succeeded in doing is paving the way for an equally radical and much youmger Mojtaba Khomeini. The regime, as such, remains very much in place.

Trump and Hegseth have also repeatedly.clzimed to have destroyed ("obliterated!") Iran's conventional arsenal - missiles, launchers, drones, arms factories amd navies. However, leaked intelligence assessments suggest that only about half of Iran's pre-war arsenal has actually been destroyed. Certainly, Iran seems to have continued its bombing and drone attacks on US allies and bases in the Gulf, and it has shot down at last two supposedly-unbeatable American fighter jets in his last week alone.

Meanwhile, the war has been costing the USA more than a billion dollars a day, a price most Americans are probably blissfully unaware of. All those Tomahawk missiles don't come cheap. 13 US  service member have died and hundreds more injured, which is peanuts compared to the huge Iranian casualties, buy more than many Americans, including anyi-interventionist MAGA voters, would be comfortable with for an unnecessary wat of this kind.

And the damage to the country's reputation, and Trump's own brand? Incalculable.

I don't recommend tattoos

I don't have any tattoos. I don't actually like tattoos; I don't find them cool or attractive. But they are ubiquitous these days, as much among soccer moms and college students as among gang members and criminals. And it turns out they ate not risk-free.

Setting aside the risk of infection inherent in any procedure that involves piecing the skin, which can be largely mitigated by using a reputable and licensed tattoo parlour, tattoo pigments can interact with the body's immune system in ways we are only beginning to understand.

Tattoo inks are not biologically inert - some inks can contain heavy metals like nickel, chromium, cobalt, even lead, as well as organic compounds like azo dyes and polycyclic hydrocarbons aromatic. They remain in the body for decades, interacting with the sun and breaking down into other chemicals, potentially triggering allergic reactions, immune sensitivities, genetic damage and cancers. They can also reduce the effectiveness of certain vaccines.

Tattoo ink does not stay just under the skin; it can migrate through the lymphatic system and accumulate in the lymph nodes, structures that help coordinate immune responses. There is evidence from animals studies (but, as yet, not human studies) suggesting that tattoo inks can cause carcinogenic by-products as they degrade over time or from exposure to ultraviolet light or laser removal. Cancers can take decades to develop in humans, so definitive research is difficult.

So, it's not absolutely certain that tattoos are dangerous (except for the immuno-compromised). But the odds are pretty strong. I won't be getting a tattoo any time soon, although not necessarily for that reason.

Sure, learn to breathe better, but it's not going to change the world

I'm not big on medical self-help books, that oh-so-popular sub-genre of a popular genre. If someone has to resort to writing a best-seller rather than going down the much less sexy (and lucrative) route of double-blind experiments and the scientific method, if someone tells anecdotal tale after anecodotal tale, however fascinating, then I start to worry, I start to get suspicious, especially where large royalty advances are involved.

And if Product X or life-habit Y really is a panacea and the cure for all known ills, then it would probably be much better-known and already integrated into mainstream medical practice, wouldn't it? If something looks like snake oil and smells like snake oil ... well, you know the rest.

But occasionally something comes along under the radar. This particular something was suggested to me by my daughter, who has a higher degree in biology and is a pretty smart cookie. She's also a fellow skeptic, and I have a lot of respect for her opinions.

Anyway, pre-amble aside, I am currently reading Breath by James Nestor. Mr. Nestor is not a medical practictioner; he's a journalist and someone who has a long history of health issues which he claims to have miraculously cured - red  flags straight away for me. But his work does seem to be pretty thoroughly researched, and replete with endless references and sources. His prose is accessible and compelling. And he's not actually selling anything, maybe apart from media appearances, professional speaking engagements, and his hosted retreats and classes... (The book itself was a bestseller.) So actually he is selling something, I guess, but, on the strength of my daughter's recommendation, I have persisted with Breath.

Nestor does indeed present correct breathing as the elixir of life and the single solution to conditions as varied as hypertension, hypotension, asthma, pneumonia, emphysema, insomnia, sleep apnea, headaches, ADHD, scoliosis, obesity, even cancer. He, and many of the practitioners and other people he quotes, claim that it can add decades to life spans, and coax significantly improved performances out of athletes and opera singers alike.

He approaches his life-changing revelations in the tried-and-tested journalistic manner, with dramatic "personal sory" anecdotes, and his own health issues, his academic study participations, and his apparent Paulian conversion, very much take centre stage. He draws some pretty extreme and far-reaching conclusions from his experiences and his research, though. And hey, who wouldn't like to believe that something as simple as breathing through your nose might be the solution to so many societal ills and life-changing illnesses?

So, am I convinced? The jury is still out. I might try some of his exercises, a little self-experimentation of my own (although my own medical issues are not particularly bad or life-changing at this point). I do remain a bit skeptical, though, particularly about the sheer breadth of Nestor's claims.

Nestor makes some extraordinary claims, so this requires extraordinary evidence, in my view. He does provide some evidence, but some of it dates back to the 1960s or the 1930s or the 1900s (and some of it MUCH older than that). Some evidence is very limited in scope, and some is definitely in the realm of the anecdotal. When he starts to tie in religious prayer and chants, Shakespeare's iambic pentameter, and ocean swells, for example, he definitely veers towards the realm of book-padding, and my eyes start to glaze over. If you ask me, it detracts from his main arguments. 

Then, when Nestor gets into.some of the more extreme, controversial, even dangerous, breathing routines - respiratory acidosis, sympathetic nervous system overload, holotropic breathwork, hypocapnia, extreme apnea, etc - he lost me completely, and I started to skip sections. To be fair, he is up-front about the contentious and risky character of some of these methods. But, in that case, why include them?

Yes, it makes some common and intuitive sense to me that breathing through the nose and slowing down breathing would be beneficial, for a whole host of reasons. But let's not make this all-encompassing and world-changing.

Danielle Smith harbours many separatists in her partty

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith continues to publicly maintain the fiction that she is not pro-separatism, and that neither is her party. She claims to support "a sovereign Alberta within a united Canada", whatever that might mean.

The truth, though, is other. The Republican Party of Alberta, the official pro-independence political party, maintains a list of pro-independence MLAs on its website that includes no less than 19 MLAs from Ms. Smith's United Conservative Party (out of 48). 

Ms. Smith's own words and actions, while carefully avoiding outright boat-burning professions of independent aspirations, are far from those of a die-hard federalist. And her underlying beliefs are perhaps better exemplified by her omissions rather than her commissions.

For example, she has made no attempt to reign in the rabid pro-independence anti-Canadian talk of one of her more outspoken MLAs, Jason Stephan, who represents Red Deer-South and is currently Alberta's parliamentary secretary for constitutional affairs. 

In a piece for the strongly pro-independence newaper The Western Standard, Stephan urged Albertans to "act and sign the petition", claiming that "Canada is in serious decline" and moving "towards a third world country". He asserts that Canada's standard of living is declining due to "stupid laws and policies emanating out of Ottawa", laws and policies that also "erode Alberta's freedoms in favour of a nanny state". He concludes "Ottawa wants Alberta broken too".

These do not sound like the opinions of a pro-Canada federalist, somehow. Some of the other UCP members have been shamed into distancing themselves from Stephan's comments. But Smith clearly does not see the need to distance herslf from such incendiary talk from a member of her own caucus by taking concrete actions like removing him from caucus. "Sovereign Alberta within a united Canada" my arse.

Trump is just the "steward" of the White House

Brave US District Judge Richard Leon has ordered the Trump adminsitration to suspend construction of the $400 million "ballroom" Trump wants to replace the East Wing of the White House.

Unfortunately, it comes too late to prevent the demolition of the old East Wing, so what the practical effects of the judicial ruling will be remains unclear. But it re-states what everyone else already knew - that Trump cannot go around remodelling national treasures on a whim and without congressional approval. As Judge Leon put it: "The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!"

"Steward", eh. He's not going to like that.

Having already remodelled much of the interior of the White House along the lines of an extravagant 19th century brothel, Trump figured he could also do whatever he wants with the outside, and even to construct a lavish bomb shelter and "military complex" underneath it. Well, not so, says the law.

Mark Carney vows not to resort to proroguing Parliament

Mark Carney had been getting a bit of flak recently for some of his inconsistency. dithering and prevarication. But, like it or not (and I don't), these are times that call for a bit of circumspection and evasion where necessary.

Kudos where kudos is due, though, he has been very clear about refusing to prorogue Parliament if - and it is still an "if" - the Liberals win enough of the upcoming by-elections to reach a majority government.

Some unspecified Liberal sources have been positing the idea that, if they do achieve a majority, they should immediately prorogue Parliament so that any existing parliamentary committees get reset, and can then be re-established to reflect the new majority status, making it easier to control committee agendas and push legislation through.

This is a legitimate political strategy and governments of all stripes have resorted to it at some point. But it is always controversial and contentious, as it is seen as self-serving and almost a kind of legal cheating and loopholing. Most governments that have taken recourse to it is usually face some level of backlash for it. 

Carney is sensible enough to want to avoid backlashes. If he thinks he can get his policies through committees without proroguing Parliament - through the usual minority government tactics of collaboration with other parties - then he should certainly do that. I approve of his stance.

Alberta education bill a classic of DoubleThink

Alberta's right-wing government at it again with the DoubleThink and the gaslighting. They must be big fans of classic books and films!

The irony has probably never occurred to them, but by introducing a bill called "An Act to Remove Politics and Ideology from Classrooms and Amend the Education Act", the Alberta government is in fact introducing politics and ideology into classrooms, where none existed before.

Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides introduced the bill, with a straight face, saying,"This bill reflects that schools should teach students how to think, not what to think". The bill in fact bars teachers from making "political or social statements", displaying flags, and naming or renaming school buildings. It imposes school trustee codes of conduct, and various other restrictive measures. It is demonstrably NOT designed to make classrooms less political, merely to change the politics to something they approve of.

They might just as well have included, "War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength", for good measure.