Kamloops residential school burials investigation is proceeding, just very slowly

Can you believe that it's been 5 years since the announcement in May 2021 of the discovery of the remains of 215 Indigenous residential school students - some as young as three years old, we were told - at an apple orchard near Kamloops, British Columbia, once the site of a notorious residential school for First Nations kids.

The news marked a watershed moment in Indigenous relations for Canada. Huge sums of money were allocated by the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau towards further investigations. There was an unprecedented period of national mourning and much heart-searching. National flags were maintained at half-mast for nearly five months. A National Day For Truth and Reconciliation was established, and people held vigils and tied orange ribbons to poles and fence-posts. Pope Francis made an official apology on behalf of the Catholic Church for its role in Canada's residential school system as a direct response to the discovery.

The hundreds of "anomalies" identified by ground-penetrating radar at Kamloops were initially described as "the remains of 215 children" in a "mass grave". The press repeated this description avidly and unquestioningly, e.g. "Remains of 215 children found buried at former BC residential school", "Canada mourns as remains of 215 children found at Indigenous school", etc. 

Gradually, as cooler heads prevailed, they were reframed as "probable burials" or just "anomalies", and they were said to be "consistent with" the size, depth and layout of human burials. The number of suspected graves was reduced to around 200. But it was still a shocking and humbling discovery that merited further investigation, and it set off a frantic search in many other parts of Canada for more evidence of hidden burial sites and residential school atrocities.

Five years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, though, and there is still no hard evidence of what actually lies beneath the apple orchard. The Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc leadership are still resisting actually digging up the "probable" dead, and some people are starting to become suspicious that something is being hidden. Chief Rosanne Casimir has equivocated with unsatisfactory statements like, "While the investigation has been more complex than we initially thought, we are making progress and will continue adapting our methodologies and information as it advances". 

Interpreting ground-penetrating radar readings is an imprecise science, to put it mildly. Rocks, water and roots can appear as indistinct radar blips requiring interpretation. A ground-penetrating radar investigation of a potential mass grave in the US some years ago ultimately turned up nothing more than construction debris, artifacts and dirt, but no bodies. Other confirmatory technologies exist - human remains detection dogs, LiDAR (a remote sensing method using laser pulses), and soil spectroscopy - and it seems that some of these are also being used in BC.

Nevertheless, five years is a long time, and it's not clear what "advances" have been made. The ongoing uncertainty has given rise to skeptics and even denialists. One theory, based on historical blueprints of the residential school, is that the "anomalies" are actually part of a defunct septic system. Some denialists (or were they skeptics) have tried to break into the orchard in the middle of the night with shovels. Some have gone so far as to call the whole thing a big hoax, and one ex-MLA called it "the greatest lie in Canadian history". There are hashtags and slogans in some corners of the Internet like #StopTheGrift, "Every Hoax Matters" and "Dig Up or Shut Up". Some critics have called for the millions of dollars of taxpayers' money to be returned to Ottawa with interest.

These are the words of a small minority of mavericks and outliers, of course, but the media blackout and the cult of silence around Indigenous investigations are not helping the official case from a PR perspective. One poll found that 63% of Canadians won't accept that children are buried at the Tk'emlúps site until excavation provides further evidence. Some Indigenous leaders believe that there is a risk that the secretive, closed-door policy might lead to further division between Canadians and Indigenous people.

In fact, it does seem that investigations are proceeding, under federal guidance and according to a detailed plan to dig the site by 2027 (pending consent from around 120 First Nations communities throughout Western Canada that sent children to the school). DNA samples from First Nations are being collected to help with potential identification. Iron-clad legal protections against misuse are required. So, the work is proceeding, but this is a mammoth undertaking of great complexity, and the Tk'emlúps leadership is playing it very close to their chest. Precise timelines remain very uncertain.

And if the area is eventually excavated, and no children's bodies are found, what then? Well, we'll cross that bridge if and when we get to it.

Israel denies allegations of sexual violence in conflict zones

The UN has accused both Israel and Russia of engaging in "patterns of rape or other forms of sexual violence" in conflict zones, and added them to a blacklist of countries suspected of such proscribed tactics.

Israel, predictably enough, back-accused the UN, and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in particular, of downright lies and slander, and severed all ties with Guterres (although what "ties" they really have is hard to know). Israel's UN ambassador pulled no punches in his public response: "Given that Antonio Guterres has chosen to violate every standard of honesty, integrity and professionalism, Israel has decided to sever all ties with the Secretary-General's Office and will wait until a new UN Secretary-General is appointed". Well!

Of course, no such thing has happened. Mr. Guterres was merely articulating the results of a detailed report by the United Nations in which multiple specific instances of conflict-related sexual violence on Israel's part are well documented, covering the years 2023, 2024 and 2025. It had put Russia and Israel "on notice" last year that they were likely to be added to the blacklist; this was not, then, unexpected. (Hamas, by the way, was already on the list.)

So, the UN was just doing its job, as was Mr Guterres. The violation of honesty, integrity and professionalism seems to be all on the side of Israel.

Russia, for its part, does not seem to have commented on the allegations, and presumably just doesn't care.

What's in a name? Where laws are concerned , quite a lot, it seems

Some of Vladimir Putin's most outspoken opponents are engaging in a full court press in Canada. And what they are campaigning for might surprise you.

The two activists are: Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian activist who has survived two poisoning attempts and a stint in a Russian jail; and Bill Browder, an American financier, who has led a high-profile (and dangerous) global campaign for targeted human rights sanctions, ever since his Russian tax advisor Sergei Magnitsky was beaten and killed in captivity for uncovering a massive fraud scheme administered by Putin officials.

The two men are currently campaigning in Canada, and their main demand is merely to rename one of Canada's laws. The Special Economic Measures Act (SEMA) has been Canada's main economic sanctions tool since it was first brought in back in 1992. Kara-Murza and Browder are arguing that the law should be renamed to include the name Magnitsky. They argue that the name is now globally synonymous with holding governments to account for human rights abuses, and that including the Magnitsky name would add "clarity" and give the law "a statement of moral purpose". 

There is currently a private member's bill, C-219, going through Parliament to exactly that effect, as well as to expand the current law to include transnational repression (where foreign states harass or harm vocal critics in order to silence or stifle their activism).

Now, I don't have a major problem with the proposed legislation, except that we already have a Sergei Magnitsky Law on the statutes, also known as the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, and things could get confusing.

But mainly, I was surprised at just how important these two world-renowned activists consider the name of the law to be, that they would contemplate travelling here to specifically campaign for it.

Correlation between education and voting in the USA

Here's an interesting little rabbit hole to go down. Based on US census data, the best-educated American states are:

1. Massachusetts
2. Colorado
3. Vermont 
4. Marylamd
5. New Jersey 
6. Virginia
7. Connecticut
8. New Hampshire
9. New York
10. Washington

The least-educated states are;

1. West Virginia
2. Mississippi
3. Arkansas
4. Louisiana
5. Kentucky
6. Nevada
7. Oklahoma
8. Alabama
9. Indiana
10. New Mexico

Well, maybe you could have guessed most of those. But what's interesting is the correlation of these results with election results.

ALL of the top ten educated states vote Democrat. And ALL of the top ten least educated states voted Republican.

Of course, it could just be coincidence.

China's immovable smoking addiction

By all accounts, Chinese President Xi Jinping gave up an atrocious smoking habit some fifteen years ago. His country, though, is making zero - or rather negative - progress on his attempts to reduce China's awful addiction to smoking.

Over the last twenty years, smoking in the rest of the world has fallen by a respectable 26%; in China, over that period, it increased by 39%. China now accounts for nearly half of the global total of cigarettes smoked, some 2.4 trillion every year. While the percentage of smokers in China has fallen a bit, as fewer young people take up the habit, overall cigarette sales have continued an inexorable rise.

Part of the problem is that cigarettes are ridiculously cheap in China - at around $3 a pack on average, they are about a third of the price of smokes in the USA and Canada. China ratified WHO's tobacco control treaty in 2005, but has never really implemented its strictest provisions. Unlike the graphic health warnings on North American and European cigarettes, Chinese cigarettes have a simple, unobtrusive text warning, all but lost among the patriotic symbols that adorn the cigarette packs produced by the China National Tobacco Corp (CNTC), a vast state-owned monopoly and the world's largest producer of cigarettes. 

Indeed, the CNTC is the main problem. Generating annual profits of $244 billion last year, the CNTC alone contributes an eye-popping 7% of China's tax income each year, about the same as what it spends on defence. (Roughly half of the sales revenue of each cigarette flows into government coffers.) The company has also been called on to help out with specific strategic priorities, like financially shoring up one of China's biggest banks, funding national semi-conductor investment, etc. In short, it has made itself economically indispensable, and accumulated a lot of political influence in the process. 

It's also alarmingly corrupt: seven former top administrators of the CNTC have been arrested on corruption charges in the last seven years. It has successfully blocked a concerted national push for an indoor smoking ban, and even official studies have concluded that the state monopoly has actively interfered in national and local attempts to rein in smoking. It's influence is, obviously, even more marked in tobacco-growing regions like Kunming and Changde, where tobacco taxes can account for more than half of the city's budget. 

There are local "tobacco bureaus" that actively work to water down even modest anti-smoking initiatives. In one city, the local health commission proposed a system of smoke-free public areas, but the local tobacco bureau managed to ensure it did not apply to restaurants and bars, and even tried to limit the smoke-free designation in schools to elementary and middle schools only.

We think of President Xi as ruling China with a rod of iron, but even his attempts to reduce the country's smoking addiction have met with the immovable object of the powerful smoking lobby.

Is Mark Carney's extended honeymoon period starting to sour?

Mark Carney has been granted a generous, even unprecedented, honeymoon period as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and as Prime Minister of the country. This is partly - mainly - due to the singular circumstances he has inherited (basically, Donald Trump and the chaos that inevitably follows him around). But, either way, Carney is currently basking in an enviable 67% approval rate, something most other world leaders can only dream of right now, and a comfortable +8% approval of the direction he is taking the country in. After a year in government, Mr. Carney is more popular than when he was elected, and his party now has a small majority, rather than the large minority it was elected with.

This all sounds exceptional, and certainly, compared to the likes of Donald Trump and Keir Starmer, it is. But, in fact, it's not dissimilar to Justin Trudeau's popularity rating a year into his tenure a decade ago, and look how he turned out! The big test of leaders often comes after about 15 months, sometimes referred to as the "15 Month Itch".

After the events of the last few weeks, you have to wonder whether that itch is starting to be felt. At the end of April, fourteen (unspecified) members of the Liberal caucus published a letter bemoaning the government's anti-environmental trajectory. Because it's undeniable the Carney has indeed presided over a wholesale roll-back and deliberate weakening of the environmental initiatives of his predecessor. Among other things, he has repealed the consumer carbon tax, eliminated the EV sales mandate, ended the oil and gas emissions cap, and called a halt to plans to end fossil fuel subsidies. Improbably, Carney maintains he is still an ardent environmentalist and climate change leader, and that he is just being practical and pragmatic, but his actions belie that. To call it a "pivot" hardly does it justice.

Then, just this week, after Mr. Carney followed though on his disastrous pipeline agreement with Alberta, the prominent MP, environmentalist and Liberal Quebec "lieutenant" Steven Guilbeault tendered his resignation, first from his position in the Cabinet and then as a Member of Parliament, on the grounds that he cannot in good conscience watch the Liberal Party abandon its environmental stance. As environment minister, Mr. Guilbeault was the architect of many of the Trudeau-era environmental policies, which he has watched being comprehensively dismantled by Carney. As a man of conscience and principle, it is all he can do to walk away.

Now, not everyone is as principled as Steven Guilbeault. Most of the 67% that still support Mark Carney (including a good proportion of Conservatives) clearly believe, as Carney himself does, that, at this particular moment in time, economic imperatives outweigh the nice-to-have option of environmental initiatives. Even though the consequences of climate change and other environmental deteriorations may be much more important in the long run, it's hard for people to see past the short-term challenges of inflation, job losses, housing shortages, etc. In times of economic fragility, it's always "the economy, stupid", and I get that.

But I wonder whether the growing schism in the Liberal Party between what you might call the "Economy First" and the "Environment First" factions is an important one? 14 out of 174 Liberal MPs is not a huge number, after all, but I do wonder if it might be the start of a fissure, the start of a 15 Month Itch. My guess, though, is not: pragmatism will win out over principle. Stupid.

Potential investors in Spacex should be very wary

The IPO for Elon Musk's SpaceX is expected to be the biggest ever, and will convert it into an almost $2 trillion enterprise. However, potential investors might want to have a good look at the way the company is set up, and particularly how Musk is paid and how his share holdings work.

An IPO (Initial Public Offering) is the way that a private company transforms into a publicly traded company, and is the way that companies raise capital for expansion. It allows institutional and retail investors to get a piece of what they think will be an exciting and profitable venture. SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp, to give it its full name) may well be exciting - space! rockets! Mars! - although the profitability piece is much less certain.

And concerning Musk's position, investors should be pretty wary about investing in a company that has been expressly constructed around him in order to maximize his income and his control. The shares that will become available for ordinary investors at next month's IPO will be Class A shares that confer one vote each. What Mr. Musk has are Class B "super-voting" shares that carry 10 votes a share. Musk has 5.5 billion of these B shares, giving him around 85% of all votes. And he has those votes even though he doesn't technically have the shares in his hands until the company achieves some increasingly-unlikely targets, such as establishing a colony on Mars with a million inhabitants, launching high-powered data centres into space, etc. 

This set-up allows Musk almost complete control over the company, including an ability to appoint insiders to its board, to set his own compensation package, to insulate himself from shareholder lawsuits, etc. Investment experts say they have never seen anything like it, calling it "insane" and that the governance structure "freaks me out".

Caveat emptor, caveat emptor, caveat emptor!

The other disease outbreak that no-one is talking about

With all the attention on hantavirus and ebola outbreaks, the devastating measles outbreak in Bangladesh has gone all but unnoticed. What measles outbreak, you ask? Well, precisely.

In just two short months, since mid-March, Bangladesh has seen 60,000 suspected measles cases and 528 suspected measles-related deaths, the vast majority of them children under 5 years old. Yikes!

The irony is that, under disgraced ex-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed, Bangladesh was making good progress on completely eliminating measles in the country, with a robust community-led vaccination campaign. After the July Uprising of 2024, though, the interim government dropped the ball, the vaccination supply was disrupted, and immunization campaigns postponed. The whole thing was made worse by hospital staffing shortages caused by, among other things, foreign aid cuts, principally by the Trump administration in the USA.

And here we see the consequences. UNICEF and the WHO have watched it happening and issued stern warnings, but nothing has changed. This is now the largest measles outbreak in Bangladesh in decades and hospitals are already overwhelmed, with no end in sight.

US crusade against Cuba makes no sense

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's usual function in the US government is to try to settle things down after yet another wild outburst from his boss, Donald Trump, who, as we know, has anger management and impulse control issues (among many other issues).

On one brief, though, Rubio is probably even more hawkish than Trump, and that issue is Cuba. After all, there is no good reason why Trump should care that much about Cuba: it has little in the way of economic or strategic importance, which is what usually exercises Trump's twisted mind. He appears to be guided by Rubio on this one.

Because Rubio DOES have skin in that game, or at least he seems to think he does. Rubio was actually born and raised in Florida, but his parents were Cuban, and he seems to share the acute sense of grievance that so many Cuban-Americans feel. Despite living the good life in the Sunshine State, many ex-Cubans and their descendants are desperate for retribution against the Castros for pushing them out, as they see it, from their island paradise. 

These are not working-class ex-Cubans (which the Castro revolution actually helped raise up from penury and almost medieval serfdom under the pre-revolution Washington-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista); these are the old wealthy landowners and middle-class professionals. Pre-revolutionary Cuba was not a pleasant place for the poor, but a near-utopia for the wealthy. Being displaced from that is what really rankles for many Florida Cubans (and their descendants), and they want revenge.

But here's the thing: very few Cuban-Americans living in Florida today have any first-hand experience of the Cuban Revolution 67 years ago, or of the supposed paradise that preceded it (actually a brutal dictatorship, defined by rampant corruption, censorship and ties to the American mafia). Most of their rancour and sense of grievance is based more on family lore and race memory, warped and overblown throughout the decades, a kind of foundational myth with little base in reality. This is also Mr. Rubio's background.

Actually, Marco Rubio's parents left Cuba in 1956, over two years BEFORE the revolution, so arguably they were not even displaced by the revolution (although maybe they saw the writing on the wall). That makes Rubio an American born of Cuban parents who voluntarily left before the revolution. So, how much skin can he really be said to have in it? He is, though, the designated representative of many other displaced Cubans in Miami (or, mainly these days, their descendants), hence his apparent ardour on the subject.

Either way, one gets the impression that it is Rubio that is driving this latest crackdown by America. Trump probably doesn't care that much, other than about the Cuban-American vote. Rubio often claims the Cuban government is a severe national security threat to the US, although pretty much everyone knows that is not true.

The United States has long maintained a debilitating embargo on Cuba, an embargo that Trump recently made much, much worse by denying the country its essential imports of oil, which used to come mainly from Venezuela (which is now effectively controlled by the US). This has led to devastating power cuts, food shortages, transportation standstill, and a general  disabling of its entire economy. Most recently, Trump's DoJ has announced the indictment of 94-year old Raúl Castro (Fidel's brother) on "Trumped-up" charges relating to events back in 1996. It's even possible that another Maduro-style kidnapping is in the pipeline. How is arresting and trying a doddering old man going to help anything?

So, all this vitriol is directed against a small island in the Caribbean which is hard-pressed to keep its own population alive and in order, let alone present a threat to the mighty USA. It's hard to credit. This crusade against Cuba makes no real sense, not even for Marco Rubio. But then, why are we still looking for sense with this administration?

Remember COVID? It's still with us

I happened to read a letter in the newspaper that gave some rather striking statistics about the death rates from COVID-19 in various countries. Turns out they were true.

According to Wikipedia/Our World In Data, Canada's death rate from COVID to date has been 1,424 per million; the USA's has been 3,624 per million, and for the EU as a whole it was 2,831 per million. I'd say that was a statistically significant difference! Countries that observed even tighter controls than Canada showed even better (lower) death rates: New Zealand (884 per million), Japan (597 per million), Singapore (358 per million), etc. Next time someone complains about government overreach during the pandemic, throw that in their face! Vaccinations and public health controls save lives! Surprise!

I haven't thought too much about COVID in a while, except to get our biannual vaccination, which I did just last week. It wasn't easy to find a vaccination - what a change from the good old bad old days! - but I did eventually track down a Moderna jab. This was not my first preference: I have always had a much worse reaction to Moderna than to Pfizer, but beggars can't be choosers. 

Several of the pharmacies I spoke to said that the government either didn't send them any stocks of the new vaccine, or sent so few that they ran out in a couple of days. That's just how it is these days, they griped. It seems ridiculous that we had to jump through so many hoops to get hold of a vaccine that should be part of our regular routine, like the flu jab.

That said, though, it does seem like, at the moment anyway, in the slow period of the year as we now are, there are very few reported/diagnosed/confirmed cases of COVID in our neck of the woods. 

The important part there, though, is "reported/diagnosed/confirmed". Most people do not report it or have it checked out these days unless they actually end up in hospital; many just assume it was a mild flu or some other infection. I've only had COVID once, about three years ago, but it was pretty nasty, and I'd prefer to avoid it if possible.

A new stream of reliable renewable energy: osmotic power

Renewable energy is still enjoying a period of robust expansion, despite the best efforts of Donald Trump (or, arguably, because of them).

But a relatively new and little-known source of renewable power is starting to come of age: osmotic power. While it might sound like a fictitious concept, or something the Power Rangers might invoke, the idea of the power of osmosis has been around for decades. Norway may be credited with the proof of concept of a practical power plant employing the notion, and Denmark opened the first fully-functioning osmotic power plant in 2023. But it is only with the recent commissioning of a full-scale, efficient, commercial plant at Fukuoka, Japan, that the real potential of the idea has become clear.

Osmosis is the movement of water from areas of low salt concentration to areas of high salt concentration through a membrane of some sort. It is the same principle that allows plants to draw water from the soil, and that keeps our own cells hydrated. In the context of power generation, as at Fukuoka, the difference in saltiness of seawater and freshwater is used to pull water across a membrane, increasing the pressure on the saltwater side. This pressure gradient can then be used to drive a turbine, thereby generating electricity.

In the case of Fukuoka, the saltwater is super-concentrated by using the brine left over from the operation of a nearby desalination plant, making the whole process much more efficient. The electricity generated is then fed back into the power-hungry desalination plant, as well as to supply a few hundred local homes. The power it generates is equivalent to about two soccer fields of solar panels, and it runs day and night, regardless of the weather. It produces zero carbon dioxide and no other harmful by-products.

The trick is to produce enough power to outweigh the energy cost of pumping the two streams of water into the power station, and the frictional loss across the membrane, which is what the Fukuoka plant has achieved. The idea is gathering steam [sic], and pilot projects are springing up in Norway, South Korea, Spain, Qatar and Australia. 

Right now, the modality is still in its infancy but, as technical challenges are gradually overcome and the concept comes of age, researchers say that it could eventually meet up to 15% of global energy demand by 2050 - not to be sniffed at. This prediction sounds overly optimistic, but it certainly represents yet another string to the essential bow of renewable energy.

Michelle Smith's exercise in disingenuity

Alberta politics is weird. Hell, Alberta is weird. Quebec likes to think of itself as a "distinct society" (or at least that was the phrase they were using some years ago, they've probably moved on by now), but much of the stuff that happens in Alberta leaves the rest of Canada open-mouthed in disbelief. And, in recent years, most of the weirdness (call it "distinctness", if you prefer) has swirled around Premier Daniella Smith, who is certainly no stranger to this blog.

The latest news column-filling antic from Ms. Smith is her insistence on adding a separation question to the existing nine (yes, nine!) referendum questions to be put before the Albertan voting public in October. But, wait, you say, didn't an Alberta judge just rule that a referendum on Alberta separating from Canada against the wishes of its Indigenous population would be unconstitutional and illegal? Well, yes, technically. But that was just "a legal mistake by a single judge", according to Smith, which would "silence the voices of hundreds of thousands of Albertans".

So, Ms. Smith - give her credit for her ingenuity as well as her disingenuity - came up with a referendum question under the Referendum Act, rather than the Citizen Initiative Act, which has no such requirement to consult Indigenous groups. Technically legal, this does nevertheless violate the spirit of the court ruling, and is "an attempt to evade" consultation with Indigenous groups according to First Nations.

The other thing that has attracted attention and opinion is that the proposed referendum question does not directly broach separatism. Rather, it is a kind of meta-question, a "referendum on a referendum" as many are calling it:

"Should Alberta remain a province of Canada or should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?"

So, even if the referendum, by some freak accident, passes, Alberta is no further forward along the path towards separation, as any future referendum would still be blocked by the legal ruling. And, even if some way round that were discovered, the path is still strewn with many obstacles, as I have described before.

So, a pretty obscure move, but arguably a clever one. Presumably, Smith thought that this would placate the separatist wing of her UCP party, on which she is reliant, despite her own (somewhat suspect) protests that she is strongly pro-federalist. 

Well, no chance of that. One key separatist leader says he feels "duped", and that his movement will "react strongly". Another warned Smith that, "if she abandons her base or betrays her base, there will likely be political consequences", following up with "We need to work to remove her as leader in the same way that we worked to get rid of Kenney". Finally, "She's got to go!", said Jeffrey Rath. Ouch, none of that sounds very conciliatory or appreciative.

Indeed, she is facing criticism from all sides, not least for the way she plays fast and loose with her words. For one thing, she is trying to blame the national unity crisis over which she is presiding on everyone else but herself, including the 14 Liberal MPs who have publicly objected to Mark Carney's attempts at rapprochement with Smith, whom she calls "cowards", and of course people like federal NDP leader Avi Lewis and BC Premier David Eby, "who continue to try to put barriers in the way of us getting our product to market". How rude of them!

Smith has also repeatedly claimed that 700,000 Albertans are calling for a referendum on separation, not just the 300,000 who actually signed a petition to that end. The other 400,000? Ah, they are the people who signed a separate pro-unity petition designed to block the separatism petition. Because they really want a separatism referendum too, don't they? At one point, she even claimed that "as many as a million or more" wanted a referendum on separation (God only knows where that other 300,000 came from). Ah, Michelle, you're turning into Donald Trump!

It's easy to call Michelle Smith disingenuous and sneaky. So many of her words and actions militate towards that conclusion. But it's really quite hard to figure out what she really wants from all this (other than to stay in power - that much is clear). She says she is proudly pro-federalist and pro-Canadian, and yet she goes out of her way to facilitate Alberta separation. Then, she could have closed the whole thing down after the courts ruled a referendum question illegal ("we tried, but we failed", "my hands are tied", that kind of thing), but instead she pushed through a pseudo-separation question anyway, thereby igniting the current firestorm on all sides. 

She's nothing if not quixotic. Oh, wait, that's how they describe Donald Trump...

Toronto's World Cup hosting not as rosy as portrayed

Toronto and Vancouver were sold a bill of goods when the two Canadian cities decided to bid for hosting some of the FIFA World Cup 2026 games.

It's happened time and time again that countries and cities get all gung ho about major sporting events like the Olympics and the World Cup. It's such an alluring idea, to invite the world to your city, to help celebrate one of the biggest international sporting events. Can you feel a "but" coming?

BUT ... however much cities and countries try to convince themselves that hosting World Cup events is a good idea, a no-brainer even, history tells us that it's really not. 12 of the last 14 World Cups have proven to be financial busts for the host countries, in some cases spectacularly so, like Brazil 2014, which precipitated a national economic emergency. (The Olympics is very much the same: the last Olympics to actually pay its way was Los Angeles in 1984.) 

While Toronto and Vancouver opted in to this risky venture, it's notable that Montreal and Chicago both considered participation and decided against it, citing excessive projected costs and FIFA's operations conditions and lack of transparency. (Edmonton and Washington DC both had their bids rejected.)

Part of the problem is cost overruns, which are now standard in World Cup bids. When Toronto initially bid on the World Cup, back in 2018, it estimated a cost to the city's taxpayers of $30-$45 million. Just 8 years later, that cost has ballooned to well over $300 million. If a city got it that wrong for any other development project, it would be considered a national scandal and heads would roll. But, because it's the World Cup, and therefore, by definition, a Good Thing, such overruns are merely swept under a very large carpet. 

According to Canada's Parliamentary Budget Office, the country as a whole is sinking over $1 billion into just thirteen World Cup games (six in Toronto, and seven in Vancouver), yielding a cost per game of some $186 million. The federal government is to cover $473 million of that, with the rest coming from other levels of government. Different estimates show Toronto on the hook for $380 million, and Vancouver an eye-watering $578 million. It's hard to see that as money well spent.

Another element of the problem is the way that FIFA operates. Cities are expected to pay for the "privilege" of hosting the event, while FIFA reaps all its money up front. FIFA also makes many very specific, and very expensive, demands on host cities - free transit for ticket holders, labour law exemptions, a ban on competing events, VIP access to hospitals, preferred procurement status for corporate partners - as I have kvetched about before. (UPDATE: Usually totally inflexible, FIFA has proved surprisingly flexible on these requirements as cities have pushed back: FIFA has now backed down on ALL of these requirements in the cases of Toronto and Vancouver at least. So, what, they were just trying it on?)

And finally, there is the revenue side. The usual justification for putting on these big events is that they are "investments" in the tourism and hospitality industries. Some proponents have been claiming, with little or no justification, that Canada's participation in the World Cup will generate up to $4 billion in potential revenue and economic benefits. FIFA itself puts that figure at $940 million, but even that seems a stretch. These benefits are notoriously difficult to prove, and even harder to predict.

Yes, the World Cup provides a showcase for host cities (although, remember, that can also have negative repercussions if not everything goes perfectly). In practice, these events typically generate a short-term boost to tourism, but very little long-term benefit. Remember as well that this year's World Cup is spread over 16 different cities across three countries, thus diluting and dissipating any tourism boost. 

And one other consideration you might not have thought about: some visitors that might have come to Toronto for other sports events, music concerts, conferences, or just to explore the city and its culture, may actually put that visit on hold while all the World Cup craziness is underway, a corollary that usually gets conveniently forgotten.

Now, I'm not necessarily saying that Toronto and other cities were just plain wrong to bid for World Cup games. The Globe's Cathal Kelly describes the emotional argument for it with his inimitable panache: "At some point, it's not about the money. It's about where we see this country in the world... Along with keeping us solvent and healthy, the point of a government is to, within reason, maximize the amount of fun in its citizens' lives... Exciting the nation's 10-year olds has to be worth at least a billion." He also argues that, in a world getting meaner by the day, it's our duty to step up, money be damned; otherwise, nobody would ever do anything worthwhile, and we'd turn into a nation of "cheapskates and philistines".

That said, personally, I would still have preferred not be involved (go on, call me a cheapskate and a philistine). Falling into a billion dollar hole without eyes wide open is foolhardy in the extreme. Part of having eyes wide open is acknowledging that we'll probably be paying for this boondoggle for many years to come.

Americans are fleeing Trump's USA in droves

Donald Trump may have succeeded in forcing out a lot of immigrants, something that might still come back to bite the country. But a lot of other non-immigrants are following the immigrants out of the USA.

Under Trump, the US is experiencing significant net emigration for the first time in over a century, with more citizens leaving the country than arriving. And Donald Trump himself is a big reason, although not the only one: along with disgust with Trump are the rising cost of living (arguably also Trump's fault), gun violence (which Trump has certainly done nothing to improve), and an inability to achieve economic prosperity (ditto). 

Thousands are deliberately giving up their citizenship, while many others are choosing to live abroad in pleasanter, cheaper, quieter places like Mexico, Portugal, Ireland, Bali, Colombia, Thailand or Canada, to study, work remotely, or retire. Comprehensive statistics are hard to come by, but net migration figures can be built up from a variety of sources. Estimates suggest that at least 400,000 Americans voluntarily left the USA in 2025.

And this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise: a Gallup poll shows that about one-in-five Americans would prefer to leave permanently, given a chance, and two-in-five women between the ages of 15 and 44. This poll was six months ago; the numbers can only be higher today.

As one woman put it: "If you can't achieve in the United States what was once called 'the American Dream', then why stay here? There is a disgraceful President, health insurance that costs more than a salary, and a Supreme Court that decided my body doesn't belong to me. My husband and I are now looking at options, and by the end of the year we will leave."

Yeah, she's got a point.

These are not low-earning, fly-by-night immigrants that are choosing to leave the USA; they are typically high-earning well-educated Americans. Of course, Trump would probably just say "good riddance, they are all Democrats", which is probably true. But, in true Trumpian style, that would be short-term blinkered reasoning.

You can see why senior assassin raises hackles

If you have kids of a certain age, or if you are at least moderately well-informed in general, you will probably have heard of a popular kids' game called "senior assassin".

I don't know who came up with the name but, thankfully, it doesn't actually involve killing old people. (At least not yet.) It is, however, becoming more than a little controversial. Many kids love it, of course. Many PARENTS love it too, as it gets their kids outside and off their screens. Some parents, though, dislike it. Police and school officials typically HATE it.

Senior assassin is essentially a game of tag with over-sized Nerf-style water pistols. 12th-graders in particular are using it as a kind of rite of passage, marking the end of their schooldays/childhoods, and their passage into the big bad grown-up world (or at least college/university). 

The idea of the game is that they attempt to catch their assigned target with their neon-coloured plastic water guns, eliminating their quarry while avoiding being eliminated themselves. The twist is: no-one knows who is targeting whom, and the assignments are constantly changing as players are eliminated; dedicated apps are used to organize and track the game. There are safe zones, and, bizarrely, you can claim immunity by wearing swim goggles. At the end of the week, the last person standing is the "winner", for what that's worth.

Well, so far so good, I guess. There are some general behaviour rules: be respectful; no trespassing; no chasing people in cars; and no realistic-looking guns. But, of course, kids will be kids, and some of them like to push the rules to the logical limit, and often well beyond. 

There has been a string of unfortunate incidents around the game, including a teen in Guelph, Ontario, who was arrested at gunpoint by police last year when his water gun was mistaken for a real firearm, and a viral video of a homeless person in Kenora, Ontario, being targeted from a car. So much for the rules. In Winnipeg, Manitoba, just this week, a senior assassin player got caught up in a police chase of real gun criminals.

Some schools not only discourage senior assassin but actively ban it, arguing that it is disruptive and potentially dangerous. Some police departments have warned against it too, especially given the very real fears some people in some areas have about gun violence.

Now, I'm all for kids playing outside as the weather warms up. But does it have to involve shooting, whether pretend or not? And does it have to be so feverish, intense and viral?

How Trump's obsession with "deals" blinds him to the bigger picture

Out of the blue, the Trump administration, through some Pentagon "Under Secretary" or other, has announced that it is putting on hold, pending review, the US-Canada Permanent Joint Board on Defense (PJBD).  

The US says it us "pausing" its participation in the PJBD because it says that Canada has "failed to make credible progress on its defense commitments" (i.e. military spending targets), even though Canada has, for the first time in decades, just increased its defence budget to meet or exceed NATO targets. It also wants to "reassess how this forum benefits shared North American defense", it says, as though that is not obvious. The announcement was made on X, so it must be official and important, right?

Now, most Americans and Canadians have probably never even heard of the PJBD, but it is a reasonably important advisory body and part of the joint North American security apparatus. Made up of senior Canadian and US defence officials, it is perhaps best known for setting up and administering the North American Air Defense command (NORAD) early warning system, although it does have other functions too. It was established in 1940, during the Second World War, and is an important symbol of the bilateral relationship between the two countries. And yes, as the name suggests, it is permanent.

Of course, the US could just as well review the Board's value and efficacy without putting it on hold. That, and the conspicuous timing of the announcement, is how you know that this actually has nothing to do with regional security and military preparedness, but has everything to do with Donald Trump's peevishness at Prime Minster Mark Carney's very public comments (particularly his Davos speech) about Canada's realignment away from an unreliable and antagonistic United States in favour of more reliable partners in Europe, Asia and elsewhere. 

It's also a pressure tactic to get Canada to buy more American military equipment (e.g. F-35 fighter jets), given Canada's recent pivot away from the US and towards more dependable, decent and welcoming providers in Europe and South Korea.

And last but not least, it is also very much about strong-arming Canada and softening us up as we start to get into the nitty-gritty phase of the scheduled renegotiation of the Canada United States Mexico Agreement on free trade. 

This, then, is all part of "the art of the deal".

Now, I have never read Trump's book The Art of the Deal, nor am I ever likely to. But it seems pretty clear to me that this kind of intimidation and duress masquerading as negotiation tactics is never going to foster long-term relationships and goodwill. All it does is piss people (and whole nations) off. This combative and transactional approach to negotiations - reliant, as it is, on an existing economic and military dominance that Trump himself was not responsible for building up - may make some short-term gains for the US, but only at the expense of its other "partners", and to the detriment of the relationship as a whole.

Trump's frenzied quest for wins of any kind and at any cost (viz. his Iran war), and his psychologically unbalanced pursuit of "deals", will not win him any friends. I don't even know what "friends" means in Trumpian terms: this is a man who calls Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping "friends", apparently blissfully unaware of just how much they despise him. Maybe Canada can be friends with the USA again one day, but that's not going to happen while Donald Trump is in power. His willful destructiveness will take decades, maybe even generations, to repair.

Kratom is not just a made-up word

It's funny how cultural innovations and fads can completely pass me by until they are no longer either modish or edgy. I guess it's just the circles I move in (or don't).

Either way, I had never heard of "kratom" until I read an article about how it has become wildly popular and even a significant source of addiction and other mental health problems in the USA (and, I'm guessing, also in Canada, to a lesser extent).

Kratom, it turns out, is a plant from southeast Asia that is widely used - in the form of powders, liquid shots, pills and teas - to treat a variety of illnesses. Recently, though, it has become extremely popular in the USA, even though about half of US states either ban or severely restrict and regulate it, and it is not approved for any medical use by the US Drug Enforcement Administration. An estimated 5 million Americans use or have used kratom, with the 21-34 year old demographic reporting the highest use.

It is used at low doses as a stimulant to boost physical energy, focus and alertness, and at higher doses as an opioid-like pain and anxiety treatment, and also for opioid withdrawal symptoms.

The DEA has flagged kratom as a drug or chemical of concern, especially given that synthetic derivatives of kratom, which can be easily bought at gas stations, smoke shops and online, may be five to fifty times more potent than regular kratom. According to studies, "most people" who currently use or have used kratom have a substance abuse disorder, report cannabis use, or exhibit some kind of psychological distress or major depression, although it is not yet clear from the studies whether the kratom use or the mental health symptoms came first. Another area of concern is the ease with which minors can obtain kratom or its analogues.

So, there you go: kratom. Never heard of it, but lots of other people clearly have.

Has America lost another war?

The United States is not used to losing. Whether we're talking sports, military conflicts, cultural exports, economic power, you name it, the US has been without doubt the most successful country in the world over the last couple of centuries.

That said, it has over-reached itself a few times, especially militarily. The War of 1812 with Canada, Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s, Afghanistan in the 2000s and 2010s, arguably even Iraq in the 2000s - these were all either American losses or at least stalemates that did not achieve their objectives.

Is Iran 2026 another such failure?

There are arguments to say so. While Donald Trump has claimed overwhelming victory almost since Day 1 and at least a dozen times since, no-one really believes that guy. Although Trump has repeatedly claimed that Iran's military capabilities have been "obliterated" (his favourite word after "tariffs"), other sources suggest that Iran has retained or restored operational access to 30 of its 33 missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz, and that it retains about 70% of its mobile launchers and it's pre-war missile stockpiles. 

Trump seems to be dialling back his earlier insistence that he needs Iran's nuclear stockpiles, or that at the very least they should be destroyed. And while the US "took out" Ayatollah Ali Khomeini early on in the action, Iran has seamlessly replaced him with his son, and the regime has continued essentially unchanged. The Strait of Hormuz is still far from "open". Iran remains a key player in the Middle East.

Of course, part of the problem here is establishing what would constitute an American victory, as Trump and his whole administration seem a bit confused about what the actual goals of the engagement are or were. Success and failure are therefore pretty hard to pin down. Also, as has been argued by better men than me, military leaders rarely actually admit defeat: their whole credibility rests on success.

Either way, whether you believe the USA has won the Iran war or not, Iran certainly believes - and with some justification - that it has not lost it. Iran has, at the very least, made America look like what the Chinese like to call a "paper tiger". People are muttering, online and in the street, that the US will not soon recover from this set-back.

A plague of frogs?

I obviously missed it at the time, but back in the innocent days of June 2005, a rather bizarre event occurred in the small town of Odžaci in northern Serbia, when storm clouds gathered and thousands of frogs rained down total the ground.

Traffic ground to a standstill and the locals ran for cover as "countless" frogs fell from the air with the rain. The frogs, described as different from the frogs usually seen in the area, seemed to survive the fall, and just hopped away, to everyone's surprise.

This is an unusual, but not unique, occurrence. A downpour of frogs has been reported in Tournai, Belgium in 1625, in Lille, France in 1794, in Kansas City, USA in 1873. Pink frogs were reported to have rained on two towns in Gloucestershire, UK as recently as 1987. 

And frogs are not the only animals to fall from the sky: the small town of Yoro, Honduras celebrates an annual Festival de la Lluvia de Peces (Festival of the Fish Rain), when a rain of small silvery fish falls once or twice a year. If it's happening, I guess you may as well celebrate it!

This is not quite the Biblical plague of frogs described in Exodus 8 verses 1-15. That was actually a much less impressive event, where an unspecified number of frogs ("abundant", millions?) came out of the river (the Nile?) and "covered the land of Egypt", getting "into the houses of your servants, onto your people, into your ovens, and into your kneading bowls". No, not the kneading bowls! Deprived of water, the frogs eventually began to die off, causing a "great stench".

This must have been concerning, but the divine threat "I will smite all your territory with frogs" was perhaps not one of the Lord's most chilling. Certainly, it didn't change Pharaoh's mind on the captivity of the Israelites, because God tried eight other plagues after the frogs.

There is of course a perfectly good explanation for all these miracles, and it doesn't involve God or smiting. Regarding the rain of frogs, there is a freak meteorological event called a waterspout, where a small tornado forms over water, sucking up any lightweight objects into its extremely low-pressure centre. When the tornado loses energy and dissipates, it rains its contents to the ground wherever it happens to be. Some waterspouts can travel hundreds of kilometers, but usually they only travel a few kilometers from their source. 

The Biblical plague of frogs can have many natural explanations (as do the other plagues and miraculous events mentioned in the Bible), from a regular migration to a one-off stress reaction caused by water pollution or algae blooms or bacterial or viral agents or increased water temperatures or drying up of parts of the river due to short-term climate events or Super El Niño years.

Weird things happen in nature. You can understand that ancient religious leaders (the politicians of their day) might have been tempted to use them for their own advantage, much like even more ancient leaders used knowledge of astronomical events, extreme weather, etc, to bamboozle and control their naïve citizens.

US position on Taiwan remains unchanged, but Trump can turn on a dime

For the most part, Donald Trump's visit to China was a bit of a nothingburger, despite his usual bombastic and delusional reporting. No big deals, and very few small deals.

Of course, the subject of Taiwan had to come up at some point in the visit, and, of course, President Xi urged Trump not to support Taiwan, which China claims as part of its own territory. Trump, for his part, blathered something about "not looking for somebody to go independent", which might or might not be a veiled and confusing warning to Taiwan not to declare its independence, which is has already done for decades. He did say that "if you kept it the way it is, I think China's going to be OK with that", which is also absolutely not true.

Trump added that "nothing's changed" with respect to the USA's policy on Taiwan, which amounts to not formally supporting Taiwanese independence, while stopping short of explicitly opposing independence, a kind of sensible on-the-fence position, given the circumstances. The average Taiwanese citizen just wants to maintain the current status quo, i.e. neither formally declaring independence, but not unifying with China either, what you might call de facto independence.

Of course, the first thing Taiwan did after Trump's visit was to publicly re-declare their independence: Taiwan "is a sovereign and independent democratic nation and is not subordinate to the People's Republic of China", read an unequivocal foreign ministry statement. Taiwan's Presidential Office reminded the world of "the multiple reaffirmations from the US side, including from President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, that the consistent US policy toward Taiwan remain unchanged".

This, of course, puts the US in an awkward position, especially as President Xi was at pains to remind Trump that any misstep on the issue could cause "conflict". 

But Taiwan too needs to tread carefully. The United States is legally required to provide weapons to Taiwan for its defence (stipulated in the Taiwan Relations Act), and an $11.1 billion arms package was announced by Washington just this last December. But a second phase of arms sales, worth around $15 billion, has not yet been approved by the US, and Taiwan must know that Trump would be more than willing to use that as a bargaining chip in his relations with China (in fact, he admitted as much, in so many words). Taiwan might think that that deal is done, dusted and non-negotiable, but Trump almost certainly does not.

Mr. Carney's disastrous pipeline deal with Alberta

Mark Carney, much like Justin Trudeau before him, is the master of the grand gesture, the grand announcement, often with little substance behind it. The difference is that, thus far at least, he seems to be managing to carry his public popularity along with him.

Yesterday was the occasion of another such grand announcement. Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith jointly announced, to great fanfare, a climate and energy agreement to follow up on their memorandum of understanding (MOU) last November. For all their talk of urgency, it has still taken six months to get to this next step.

The main item is the construction of a new one-million-barrel-a-day oil pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast. A firm  proposal is to be submitted by Alberta to the major projects office by July 1st, it is to be designated as a project of national interest by October 1st, and construction could start by "as early as" September 1st 2027, and in theory it could be up and running by 2033 or 2034. I suppose, in Canadian terms, that is expeditious, if not downright breakneck.

Of course, there is as yet no private sector proponent willing to stick its neck out and commit to building the thing. Neither is there a confirmed route that is not going to get bogged down in endless controversy and acrimony. Both parties say that they will respect Canada's duty to consult with Indigenous peoples, and the province of British Colombia remains implacably opposed to such a pipeline though its land and coastal waters. BC accuses Carney of pushing through "nationally significant" energy deals without involving the entire country, and of "rewarding" Alberta's bad behaviour and separatist rumblings. 

So, all things considered, we are probably no further forward than we were, despite the grand announcement.

The other part of the announcement was an agreement with Alberta on industrial carbon pricing and emissions reductions. Alberta is to impose on its oil producers a carbon price of $130 a tonne (that is what they would pay for carbon offsets), up from the current level of $95 a tonne, according to a gradually increasing schedule between now and 2040. Yes, 2040! 

However, it turns out that the "floor price" - the price actually enforced by government - will be only $110 a tonne, and even that price will only start to be regulated by 2030, while the floor price will actually start at the ultra-low level of $60 a tonne. Talk about devil in the details! Compare that to the Trudeau-era federal climate plan, which set the price of carbon at $170 a tonne by 2030, and you can see just how much Carney has been swayed and equivocated. Incidentally, the lower carbon price is to apply across the country, pending consultations with other provinces. 

It gets worse. Industrial emitters also get a large carbon price-free allowance before carbon prices, much reduced as they are, even kick in. This is supposed to help them compete in global markets, and I'm sure it does. But it means that the effective carbon price they pay is actually miniscule in many cases. The Canadian Climate Institute estimates that the Canada-Alberta agreement recently struck might add about 16 cents to the cost of producing a barrel of oil by 2030. And this is what Alberta and its oil companies are up in arms about? Talk about "over a barrel".

Environmentalists, of course, are not happy, slamming the deal as betraying the country, undercutting national ambitions on industrial carbon pricing, and sabotaging plans to combat climate change. It puts "Canada's target of net zero by 2050 well out of reach", they say, and its 2030 targets will be put back by at least a decade as a result. Carney is still promising that Canada will meet its 2050 net zero goal, but his promises appear increasingly divorced from reality, and hardly anyone else seems to share his optimism.

But the muck gets yet thicker. Carney also made clear that the pipeline deal is still dependent on the construction of a massive carbon capture project in the Alberta oil sands, the so-called Pathways project, which is to be built built the Oil Sands Alliance. Carney was unequivocal: "No Pathways, no pipeline".

The Pathways initiative is a 400km long pipeline, funded largely by the region's oil industry, that will transport carbon trapped at oil sands facilities to a storage area located under Cold Lake, Alberta. At the moment, though, this whole project is largely theoretical, and the oil company execs involved are increasingly getting cold feet as the costs and technical challenges become apparent. The coalition of potential builders also object the $130 price on carbon that has just been set, however low it might be. This, then, is not going to happen by September 2027 (or even 2033). And, "no Pathways, no pipeline", right?

So, where does all this leave us? Well, nowhere really. For all the grand announcements, we are no closer to getting a new pipeline built than we ever were. Now, that's not necessarily a bad in thing, in my personal opinion. And I do wonder whether this might not be some elaborate house of cards built by Mark Carney - once an environmentalist himself, remember - in full knowledge that it will almost certainly all come tumbling down eventually. Has the wily Carney been playing us (and Alberta) all along?

Honda cancels EV plant just as demand atarts to pick up

It's ironic that Honda is officially putting its $15 billion electric vehicle (EV) and battery plant in Alliston, Ontario on indefinite hold now, just as demand for EVs in Canada (and around the world) is starting to pick up again.

Honda "paused" development last May, at a time when EV demand was indeed reeling. Since then, though, the US war in Iran and the ensuing oil price shock, along with Canada's reinstatement of a $5,000 rebate, has made EVs much more palatable and demand for zero emission vehicles (ZEVs) is recovering, big-time. March 2026's sales of ZEVs in Canada has increased by 75% over the previous year. Whereas EVs made up just 6.6% of new vehicles a year ago, in March 2026 they made up 12.2%, almost double. And gas prices have continued going up and up since March as the US war in Iran continues, so the expectation is that EV demand will continue to rise.

And this is the time that Honda drops its bombshell about cancelling its new investment in the Alliston plant?

A big part of the problem is that the market for EVs in the USA is still soft, and most of the cars that would be made in Ontario would be destined for the US, not Canada. But, even in America, EV demand is picking up, as the Iran war and the blockage in the Strait of Hormuz, drags on with no end in sight.

So, is Honda being short-sighted here? Well, longer-term trends are almost impossible to predict in this rapidly changing world, and Honda is notoriously conservative. It's hard to commit $15 billion without a pretty firm guarantee of future sales demand, I get that. But taking risks and getting ahead of the competition is what corporate capitalism is all about, no?

Trump is openly flirting with fascism, but Americans only care about gas prices

I'm kind of tired of writing about Trump. But I still keep doing it because, like it or not, he is the driving force of our times, the single individual generating most of the worldwide news (almost all of it bad) in these weird times we live in.

Trump's popularity in the USA, the metric by which he measures himself, is at an all-time low. (His popularity in the rest of the world has always been at an all-time low, but doesn't really care about that.) So, does this mean that America is finally waking up from an embarrassing - and extremely consequential - trance?

Er, probably not.

See, here's the thing. Despite the fact that Trump has spent the last year and change converting the US into a fully-functional fascist state, the thing that is finally causing Americans to snap out from under his spell is actually something as mundane as ... gas prices.

Think about that. It gives a good indication of just where American priorities lie. 

Trump has presided over the establishment of a vicious paramilitary force tasked with oppressing the American people and forcefully abducting specific segments of the population based on racist ideology. He has co-opted the highest legal court in the land by installing compliant judges willing to put ideological bias before sound legal judgement. He has wilfully demonized political opponents, and weakened institutional trust. He has pursued an aggressive policy of imperialistic expansionism, in words and sometimes in actions. He has deliberately taken actions to undermine democratic norms and protections, and has openly flirted with extreme authoritarianism, with all the trappings (think White House ballroom, mugshot pictures hanging from public buildings, etc). He has attempted to suppress free speech anywhere it implies criticism of his actions and policies. He, his family, and members of his administration have all enriched themselves on the back of his policies, at the expense of the working stiff. He no longer feels constrained by international norms or domestic institutions, but is happy to let power speak, whatever the ethical implications. Truth is now optional in official circles.

This, it has been widely argued, is fascism. But many Americans have stood idly by and watched all this happen, like a frog in a pot of heating water (I'm talking here about the republican/conservative half of this dismally divided country - Democrats have always opposed Trump, even if not as loudly as they might have.) Land of the free? Cradle of democracy? Pshaw. Over-rated.

What has actually - finally - started to galvanize opposition to Trump and his policies is the threat to Americans' profitability and financial ease. America has always been a country obsessed with money and wealth, to a degree unmatched by any other state. When Trump's disastrous trade policies and, particularly, his ill-advised invasion of Iran (and the oil price chaos that, predictably, followed) finally started to hit their proverbial pocketbooks, even Republicans have started to wake from their deplorable sleepwalk.

Brightly-painted wind turbines would save many bird deaths

I've posted before on ways to make wind turbines less destructive of birds, bats, etc. (I've also posted on the fact that wind turbines are much less destructive of birds, bats, etc, than most people think.)

Now, another study, recently published in the journal Behavioural Ecology, shows that birds are much more likely to avoid turbine blades that are painted to mimic venomous snakes or frogs. It makes a lot of intuitive sense: neither birds nor bats are particularly sophisticated intellectually, and operate much more on short-range instincts.

Almost all wind turbines and their blades are painted bright white, for reasons I have never understood. And, for reasons no-one else really seems to understand, that is the very colour that attracts birds towards them. It has been known for some years that even just painting one of the blades black significantly reduces bird collisions, and yet I have still never seen a wind turbine painted anything other than white.

The latest study demonstrates definitively that birds are least likely to avoid white blades, followed by blades where one is painted black. However, they are even more likely to avoid blades painted red and white, or red, black and yellow (to mimic a venomous coral snake). The differences are apparently quite dramatic. 

Personally, I think that brightly-coloured striped wind turbines would be an improvement aesthetically - plain vanilla white is so blah - although I'm not sure everyone would agree.

Does Donald Trump type out his own social media posts?

I was trying to figure out how Donald Trump found the time and the energy to make all those unhinged late night Truth Social posts. I mean he'd have to spend most of the day consuming the latest conspiracy theories and disinformation streams, wouldn't he, and then stay up half the night as well? Well, it turns out that he has a "personal aide" or "executive assistant" called Natalie Harp who does most of the leg (and finger) work for him.

Little-known and low-profile, Harp is one of his most influential aides, and has been instrumental in the nearly 8,800 posts Trump has made since the start of his second term. She has access to Trump's Truth Social account, but she also has an alarming amount of control over what Trump writes about, and she also controls much of what reaches his desk in the first place. Unusually, she appears to work directly for Trump and answers only to him, without any oversight by Trump's chief of staff, national security officials, or other communication aides, which has raised more than a few eyebrows.

How it works is that she arrives at Trump's residence each evening with a stack of printed-out draft posts, on subjects that she thinks Trump might want to publish under his name. She will have spent most of her day scouring the internet for suitable videos, images and text that would align with Trump's current grievances, whims and worldview. 

Then, once Trump approves the selections, she logs into his account, usually in the late-night early-morning hours, and posts large batches of messages in quick succession, occasionally up to 160 in a single night's activity. This gives the impression that Trump is up at all hours, working(!) for the American people.

So, who is this eminence grise? Well, not so grise, it turns out. Ms. Harp is 34 years old, and sports long blonde hair and lots of make-up - a typical Trump pick, you could say. She used to be an anchor with One America News Network, a far-right political commentary TV network, and joined Trump's campaign in 2022. She became known as the "human printer" because part of her brief was to follow Trump around, even onto golf courses, to print out pertinent information for him, as Trump is of an age where he prefers the printed word to screens.

Natalie Harp

Although she has somehow managed to remain quite private, she has attracted some scrutiny, particularly for some rather embarrassing adoring letters she has sent to Trump, which include comments like "You are all that matters to me", "I don't ever want to let you down", and "I want to bring you joy". Sycophantic, bordering on creepy. Others in Trump's staff find the "aggressiveness of her attention" discomfiting and unnerving, and possibly even a security concern.

Trump, however, is a big fan, and anyway is a sucker for the attentions of a young blonde woman. (Snopes' fact-check points out that reports from the New York Times and Washington Post of an affair between the two are actually just based on hearsay and speculation.) So, maybe don't feel too sorry for him tapping away on his phone into the wee hours - he's probably actually tucked up in bed with a can of Coke at the time his Truth Social posts are sent out.

The next Super El Niño is due this year

Batten down the hatches, we're in for a wild ride this year, weatherwise. We're expecting the strongest El Niño weather pattern EVER in the second half of the year - a "Super El Niño", in the rather alarming argot of some climate scientists. Combined with the effects of climate change, this will probably generate some record-breaking weather in terms of temperatures and rainfall: stronger heat waves, worse droughts, more wildfires, stronger storms and more intense floods (although, as recompense, the Atlantic hurricane season may be less intense).

El Niño is a long-term weather event, usually lasting nine to twelve months, in which sea surface temperatures in the equatorial regions of the Pacific Ocean are warmer than normal. This has the effect of altering and de-stabilizing the world's weather patterns for the duration, as it re-distributes heat across the whole planet. These events tend to occur every two to seven years, following no fixed schedule. La Niña, on the either hand, is where the equatorial Pacific is cooler than average, causing different weather patterns that can have their own challenges.

Currently, sea-surface temperatures are rising rapidly, with further intensification expected in the months to follow. The volume and intensity of sub-surface warm water anomalies in the Pacific are as large as have ever been seen, scientists say, "more out of balance than at any time in observed history". 

So the chances are high that this year's El Niño will be the all-time strongest, even more extreme than the previous record-holder of 1877-8. That year's El Niño caused catastrophic famines across India, China, Brazil and elsewhere that killed more than 50 million people (3-4% of the world's population at the time), "arguably the worst environmental disaster to ever befall humanity".

While this year's El Niño may be even stronger, it's effects may not be quite as drastic. These days, we are forewarned by our technology (although we do then have to act on the warnings!) The Super El Niño of 1982-3 was a pivotal turning point in our understanding of the phenomenon, and led to crucial advances in ocean monitoring and real-time tracking. They helped predict the Super El Niños in 1997-8 and 2015-6.

Plus, we are better prepared socially, politically, technologically and economically to deal with the effects - at least in theory, and provided we can stop waging war on each other for long enough to deal with it.

Erskine-Smith's hubris may have derailed his whole career

I live in the Beaches-East York riding of Toronto. It's a reasonably well-to-do area, but reliably left-wing politically. That can translate into Liberal or NDP, depending on the particular candidates involved. The same can largely be said for the next door riding, Scarborough Southwest. However, it has been a bit like musical chairs in the area's politics just recently, as a whole complex series of candidate moves have taken place.

It was all precipitated by the resignation of long-time Scarborough Southwest federal MP Bill Blair, who is to take up the position of High Commissioner to the UK (promotion? demotion? early retirement? merely a change of scenery?) The provincial MPP for the same riding, Dolly Begum, had a yen to break into federal politics, which she clearly sees as the Big Leagues. So, she resigned her provincial seat and stood as a federal candidate in Scarborough Southwest, which she promptly won (part of the recent wave of Liberal by-election wins and floor-crossings that has given them a majority status).

Meanwhile, ambitious Beaches-East York MP Nathan Erskine-Smith was not satisfied with his position in the federal government (and was also smarting from being demoted out of the cabinet by new Liberal leader Mark Carney), and had set his sights on leadership of the provincial Liberal Party. (Why, you ask? No idea.) Now, it's not essential, but it's vastly preferable for him to have a seat in the Ontario Parliament for such a move, and his old riding of Beaches-East York already has a Liberal incumbent (Mary-Margaret McMahon). So, he figured, easy, pick up Dolly Begum's old provincial seat in Scarborough Southwest, just next door. Still with me?

Except it wasn't so easy. Erskine-Smith has lost the Liberal nomination for the provincial riding to local pizza mogul, Ahsanul Hafiz. Erskine-Smith - polished, experienced and oh-so-ambitious - just assumed he would be able to walk into the Scarborough seat. Yet now he may have put paid to his ambitions for the provincial Liberal leadership, and possibly any parliamentary seat at all, federal or provincial. 

He can probably keep his current federal seat in Beaches-East York, which he never explicitly resigned from, even though that would be the usual protocol. (He only committed to resigning that seat if he won the provincial nomination.) That was in itself a point of contention for many Scarborough voters, and his yearning to move out of Beaches-East York - and just the man's naked ambition - may have damaged his brand there too.

So, Erskine-Smith has gone from a safe and secure position in the federal (now majority) government and, up until quite recently, a cabinet position, to a much shakier position and possibly an end to his aspirations to lead the Ontario Liberals (which are still in complete disarray anyway). Oh, how the mighty are fallen! And what a miscalculation for one who had such a reputation for political savvy! Hubris is the word that springs to mind.

Labour council losses laid at Keir Starmer's feet

Votes are still being tallied after Britain's local authority elections, but it seems clear that it has been a bit of a bloodbath for the ruling Labour Party.

Labour has gone from 65 councils to just 28. Most of them were converted into "no party majority", but several Labour councils went directly to the surging hard-right Reform UK party (and a handful to the Green Party). Reform ended up with a majority in 14 councils, and the Greens with 4, both up from zero in the last election. The centrist Liberal Democrats also had a good showing, increasing its count from 1 to 15 councils. The Conservatives continued their down-and-out status, losing most of the few councils they used to control.

In Wales, once-dominant Labour lost 26 of its 35 seats, and the Conservatives lost 15 of their 22, with ascendant Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru becoming the largest party, although Reform UK also did better there, taking 34 seats (up from zero). In Scotland, the Scottish National party retained their dominance (although just short of an outright majority), despite a surge from Reform and the Greens, with the Conservatives seeing the biggest flops.

However, although Reform UK has clearly made significant gains in these local elections, it was maybe not as dramatic as expected by many, and there is some speculation that Reform's support may have already peaked. Reform leader Nigel Farage, of course, is claiming a "historic change in British politics" and asserting that Reform UK is on track for a general election victory, but this was probably not the landslide he had been hoping for in his heart of hearts.

Either way, overall, Labour was the big loser, and almost everyone is saying that the single biggest reason was national Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, even though he has nothing really to do with regional municipal politics. Maybe it makes no logical sense, but this election was in essence a referendum on Keir Starmer's leadership (and on the extent of Reform UK's surge).

The man is REALLY unpopular, and has been for some time, in spite of his broadly popular stance on the Iran war. Not only has be failed to deliver on what he mainly campaigned on in the last election - improving Britain's public services, which are creaking and all but moribundnafter years of Tory neglect - Starmer is just seen as bland, prevaricating and weak. A skit on SNL UK last week says it all about how the British people look on the once-popular Sir Keir Starmer.

For all that he insists that he is not going anywhere, there doesn't seem any way he can extricate himself from this situation, and many Labour MPs and voters are already looking ahead to a new leader, on the grounds that there is no way Labour can win another election with Starmer in place. (As of today, at least 90 of his own Labour MPs are calling for Starmer to stand down, and at least three cabinet ministers have tendered their resignations, so there doesn't seem to be any way back for him now.) Britain has burned through five prime ministers in the last seven years - that may soon turn into six.

As for who might replace Starmer, Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is many people's favourite to replace Starmer, although Burnham is not an elected MP (a pre-requisite for the leadership position). Another popular choice is Health Secretary Wes Streeting, with one-time deputy prime minister Angela Rayner as a longer shot.

Israel uproots thousands of Palestinian olive trees

The state of Israel has never had a good image. From its very beginnings, it has been militaristic, combative and uncompromising. Since its scorched-earth policy in Gaza over the last couple of years (and, yes, let's say it, it's genocidal intentions), it has lost most of the little goodwill it may have had. You can be sympathetic to Jewish people for the way they were treated by the Nazis, but still hate the policies and the philosophy of the Israeli state, particularly its apartheid treatment of Palestinians and its aggressive moves to settle Israelis on Palestinian land.

More recently, since the press spotlight has been caught up in the Iran debacle, Israel has pressed what it sees as its advantage and made further illegal incursions into the West Bank. Attacks and intrusions by Israeli settlers have become increasingly violent, and whole Palestinian villages have been razed to the ground to make way for Israeli settlements (illegal under UN law).

Now, they have upped the ante, and hit new highs (lows) of callousness, as Israeli contractors uprooted and destroyed thousands of olive trees in the West Bank. The olive trees of Palestinians are their lifeline economically, but also a symbol of their national pride. Israel, of course, knows that, and pursued this action deliberately to further its aims of complete obliteration of Palestine.

It's known that the orders came directly from Bezalel Smodrich, one of the most hawkish members of the Israeli cabinet. He has made his intentions quite clear: to "build the land of Israel and destroy of the idea of a Palestinian state". You can watch video of the devastation if you have a strong constitution.

Still on the fence about whether Israel is guilty of genocide?

Say "hello" to hello

I heard something on the radio yesterday that shocked me. Well, nothing new there, you might say. But this was a quirk of the English language that I was surprised not to have known about before.

Apparently, "hello" - along with variants like "hallo", "hullo", "hulloa", etc - has not always been the standard English language greeting, used by all and sundry. In fact, "hello"as a greeting is something of a late-comer, and was not popularized until Thomas Edison succeeded in making it the default greeting for phone conversations in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. By the 1870s, it featured in the "How To" section of the new phone books, and gradually became officially recognized. (Telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell preferred the rather nautical "ahoy", and apparently continued to use that throughout his life, even on the phone.)

The word "hello" did exist before this, of course, but it was more of an exclamation than a greeting, a word to attract attention or express surprise, closer to today's "Hey!" than anything else.

All of which made me want to go back to Jane Austen and Charles Dickens novels, to see how people greeted each other there. Sure enough, the usual greeting was most often "Good morning/afternoon/evening" or just "Good day", or, alternatively, straight into "How do you do?" 

Going back earlier, say in Shakespearean times, a greeting was more likely to be "hail" or a cheery "what ho!" or "well met!", although "good day" and "good morrow" were also common. No "hellos".

Ha! Who knew?

"Goodbye", on the either hand, has been in common use since at least the 16th century, before which "farewell", "Godspeed " or "adieu" were more common.

This is not the next pandemic

People can perhaps be forgiven for having panicky flashbacks to the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak six years ago (yes, six years!) But, rest assured, scientists tell us that this is a very different situation.

The outbreak of hantavirus on a Dutch cruise ship in the South Atlantic is a localized concern, and is being dealt with in a rational, sensible way. As a World Health Organization spokesperson put it, "This is not COVID, this is not influenza, it spreads very, very differently". This particular variant of hantavirus, known as the Andes Virus for its origins in Argentina, can spread from human to human, unlike most hantaviruses that require exposure to the urine, feces or saliva of infected rats and other rodents. But it does not spread easily, and it requires extended close-quarters or intimate exposure.

It is thought (but not proven) that the first cruise victim may have caught the virus while birdwatching at a garbage dump outside of Ushuaia, Argentina (birders!), before boarding the ship. He passed it on to his wife and then others, both husband and wife ultimately dying, along with a German woman. Thus far, a total of eight passengers on the small cruise ship have been infected, five confirmed by testing, three suspected. However, the incubation period can be as long as four to six weeks, so it is quite possible that more cases will show, especially given that, until the illness was diagnosed, passengers were eating, socializing and interacting together as usual on the ship.

Hantaviruses like the Andes variant cause generic flu-like symptoms (fatigue, fever, muscle aches, occasionally diarrhea and vomiting), which can make them hard to diagnose. In some patients it can then progress into a severe, sometimes deadly, respiratory infection. The death rate may be as high as 30-40%, although it is probably much lower than that in practice. There is currently no specific treatment or vaccine available, but medical care (including ventilators) can help.

Unlike COVID-19 when it arrived, hantaviruses are relatively well-known and studied, and they do not spread or mutate as quickly and easily as COVID. The hundred or so passengers on the cruise ship who may have been exposed to the virus are being monitored closely, and are being asked to stay in their cabins, which have been thoroughly disinfected. The remaining passengers will disembark at Tenerife, in the Spanish Canary Islands, where they will be isolated and medically assessed.

However, about 25 passengers have already disembarked at the South Atlantic island of Saint Helena, from where they have already dispersed to a dozen or so countries including Turkey, Singapore, New Zealand and the United States (you can fly to all those places from Saint Helena?) These passengers have been contacted, and their national health authorities will make the decisions about monitoring and quarantining.

So, worthy of close attention? Sure. Time to panic? Absolutely not.