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.

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. 

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.

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. There doesn't seem any way he can extricate himself, 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.) 

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.

Why would you not fill in your census form?

Some people in Canada are refusing to fill out their census forms, risking fines up to $1,000.

Ridiculous people! What kind of a "protest" is that? More money than sense!

Why does Russia care about Alberta separatism

While I am on the subject of disinformation and foreign political interference, the Alberta separatism movement, such as it is, is a prime target for foreign propaganda and interference. There's already plenty of home-grown disinformation and misinformation out there; a bit more from outside the country probably wouldn't get noticed. But it seems there's more of it going on than we realize.

While monitoring Russian disinformation campaigns targeting Ukraine and support for Ukraine in Canada, researchers were surprised to see that a lot of the mendacity emanating from Russian propaganda outlets like the Pravda Network, CopyCop, Storm 1516 and the Internet Research Agency was specifically targeting Alberta separatism. Not only are there large numbers of social media posts - hundreds of thousands - but complete websites (like AlbertaSeparatist.com) that purport to be grass-roots campaigns by aggrieved Albertans, but are actually being generated by Russian propaganda farms. AI-generated "slopaganda" is also being used to pollute the information environment, intensify grievances, and confuse legitimate debate with foreign manipulation.

I mean, you know this stuff happens. But, when you stop and think about it, what are they really trying to achieve? What is it to Russia whether Alberta separates or not? How does it merit such a concerted effort to them? Don't they have bigger fish to fry?

I can understand that the Trump administration and the MAGA mob might have a vested interest in Alberta separation (and they are indeed attempting to influence the vote, albeit mainly thought more mainstream, and less illegal, conduits). But Russia?

DisinfoWatch says that Russian interference in the Alberta separatism debate "appears doctrinal, operational and sustained", all part of the Russian government's long history of exploiting divisive issues in Western democracies in general. Division for the sake of division, as far as I can tell. There is much more detail on DisinfoWatch's website. The Global Centre for Democratic Resilience and the Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Data and Conflict at the University of Regina both concur.

I guess I understand, in general terms at least, that anything that weakens the West strengthens the East. It just surprises me that the hawks in the Kremlin see this as an issue deserving of not-insignificant funds. And it's such a bore that we have to spend time and money guarding against these digital incursions.

All of this, and the revelations that a separatist group gave unauthorized access to the province's list electors to hundreds of people (potentially including foreign actors), has cast a pall over the whole enterprise and put the legitimacy of its outcome in doubt.

UPDATE

Given all of the above, it seems particularly ironic that Alberta's Minster for Public Safety and Emergency Services should choose his week to announce that an RCMP report has somehow managed to find that there is no evidence that Alberta's separatist movement has been subject to foreign interference.

Wind power under attack

And I don't mean from Donald Trump!

Sweden, always the overachiever, has managed to get to the point where it produces 99% of its electricity from "clean" sources (40% from hydro, 23% from wind, 2% from solar, and - OK - 27% from nuclear). Just 1.2% comes from fossil fuels. A pretty impressive achievement, even for an overachiever, and Swedes can justifiably congratulate themselves.

If you read Swedish social media, though, you'd get a very different impression. You'd think that Sweden's reliance on wind power in particular is excessive and somehow dangerous. You'd think that most of the country was up in arms against all this wrong-headed reliance on cheap, non-polluting wind energy. 

There are four main narratives: the wind industry is run by greedy developers putting naked profit before environmental and social good; wind power is being imposed by distant political or economic elites on unwilling local populations; wind turbines are harmful to nature and wildlife; and wind power is inherently destabilizing, technologically unviable, and economically unfeasible.

Of course, almost all of the online posts are disinformation (deliberately deceiving), those that aren't just misinformation (merely incorrect or out-of-context), and all of these contentions have been repeatedly disproved by reputable studies over many years. 

What's more, these attacks on the wind industry appear to be coordinated. Most of the attack posts seem to have been written in Sweden, but a good percentage of them are from France, Norway, Finland, UK and Germany. Analysis shows that those from the UK generate the most engagement, followed by Germany, Norway and France. Engagement from Swedish posts seems to be much lower. There doesn't seem to be a comparable backlash against solar, hydro, or even nuclear energy.

It's not clear where these social media posts are coming from, and how - or even if - they are being coordinated. It seems that they may be emanating from political groups hanging onto Trump's coattails. They seems to be attempts, presumably by the far right, to attack the business model of European companies and to weaponize anti-EU sentiment, or just to discredit the status quo. Just as in America, unscrupulous populist politicians can use such sentiments for electoral gain, regardless of whether they are based on truth or reality.

It seems there's no such thing as paradise, whether socially, environmentally or politically. Someone always wants to crap on it.

Accent-masking AI tech just another step down the slippery slope

The wholesale adoption of articial intelligence (AI) has raised all sorts of red flags and complaints, and some of its applications do seem pretty morally grey (or at least tone deaf). This is one I hadn't anticipated, though.

Canadian telecom Telus has started using AI-driven accent-correcting technology in its call centres, as well as in its internal phone operations. The technology, provided by a third party company Tomato.ai, uses speech-to-speech models to transform live audio. It is designed to preserve the speaker's voice and "emotional tone", whole addressing mispronunciations and the sometimes hard-to-understand accents of many call centre agents working from overseas (or even from within Canada).

Of course, this has raised hackles. Opponents say that any kind of deception of this kind should be either stopped, or at least Canadians should be informed up-front that AI is being used, particularly as many call centre functions are being outsourced overseas, depriving Canadians of job opportunities. Canada has seen a substantial amount of customer service related job reductions in recent years, particularly within the telecom sector.

There again, it is argued, the technology improves operational efficiency, thus saving Canadians money in the end. It helps speed up calls, helps customers find good solutions, and protects service agents from harassment and discrimination. That may be the case, but it is a solution to a problem of the company's own creation (off-shoring call centres to save money).

Should Canadians have the right not to be deceived by AI technology, as telecom unions are arguing? Probably. Does it really matter? Well, yes, it kind of does, particularly from the point of view of AI-induced job losses. Why don't we just go the whole hog and have AI man the phones directly, rather than just deceiving customers like this? Well, because AI is just not that good yet. But it will be soon.

A generational ban on smoking

I don't know anyone who likes smoking. Even people who smoke don't tend to like smoking. Most countries have been discouraging it (i.e. making it more unpleasant and more onerous) for decades now. There is a distinct stigma against smoking now. Hardly anywhere has actually banned it, though.

Britain is now part of an exclusive club that is moving to actually ban it. It's doing so by what is usually known as a "generational ban" on tobacco: a couple of weeks ago, Britain passed a law whereby anyone born after 1 January 2009 (i.e. those under 18 years old on New Year's Day 2027) will find it illegal to buy cigarettes or other tobacco products in British shops. Or rather, it is illegal for shops to sell cigarettes to them. Ever. 

The ban is to begin on January 1st 2027. Going forward, the legal age will increase by one year annually. Thus, by 2037, for example, no-one under the age of 28 would be allowed to buy cigarettes; by 2050, the age requirement would be 41.

So, the whole of the current younger generation - and subsequent generations, in perpetuity, at least in theory - will never be able to smoke (legally). This conjures up the prospect, one day, of a whole country where no-one smokes. Unless, of course, the law is later repealed - and you have to believe that it will be one day - smoking will be actively prohibited. 

Some are calling it the boldest public health move in generations. Healthcare advocates and cancer charities are lauding the bold move (smoking is one of the leading causes of preventable death, disability and ill health). Some conservatives are worried about its effects on employment in the industry, and others are howling about government overreach. But, in general, there has been a surprising consensus across the political spectrum, and it does seem like the legislation is indeed going through.

The only other country to have passed a similar law is the Maldives. New Zealand was on the cusp of it until a change in government derailed the legislation. Also, 22 individual towns in the US state of Massachusetts have also passed generational bans (although that does make it rather easy to evade...)

In the meantime, though, all eyes are on the UK. How will it be policed? How easy will it be to evade? How will stores check people's ages?  Will there be riots? How will black market smugglers be dealt with? How will the government cope without such a large tax generator? What about people with clinical addictions? (In theory, very few current under-18s should be addicts.) 

A large-scale social and medical experiment is going forward before our very eyes. It will be fascinating.

Canada Strong Fund is many things, but not a sovereign wealth fund

The Carney government has made a big song and dance around the announcement last week of the Canada Strong Fund, an independent Crown corporation that it calls "Canada's first sovereign wealth fund". Unfortunately, Canada's new Parliamentary Budget Officer says that the announcement "raised more questions than it answered".

A soveign wealth fund is not in itself a bad idea. Many other countries have them, especially those with big resources sectors, although the only one that is ever referenced in practice is Norway's, which is the biggest and the best. The idea is to store and invest surplus profits from resource extraction industries to provide funds and a buffer for when those resources finally, inevitably, run out. The ever-sensible Norway has done that in spades.

The Canada Strong Fund is not that.

Norway has a largely (although not completely) state-owned oil industry, so it was in a position to salt away large surpluses over the last several decades, while taxing people heavily to provide everyday services. Alberta could have done something similar by salting away tax revenue from its lucrative oil and gas industry, if it had had the foresight decades ago. But, for ideological reasons, it preferred to use those funds to massively reduce its taxes - the political equivalent of a spoilt kid choosing instant gratification.

But, as Andrew Coyne argues in the Globe and Mail, more eloquently than I ever could, the Canada Strong Fund has hardly any of the characteristics of a sovereign wealth fund. For one thing it has been set up using existing government funds, which, given that it doesn't actually have any surplus funds, means that it has borrowed $25 billion on the open market. Or, if you prefer, taken $25 billion out of the pockets of taxpayers in order to invest it on their behalf.

It's not at all clear when and how the fund will be used. Presumably, it is not being invested just for the hell of it, although, as the government tells it, it's for "generating strong, commercial returns". Umm, OK. It's not even clear that it can make more money than the additional national debt interest that has been incurred to create it. We are told that we can invest in it ourselves (although we are warned that returns may be "limited"). But government bonds of various types already exist; do we really need some kind of goverment mutual fund as well.

If it is intended to fund those "nation-building projects" the government keeps talking about (although not actually acting upon, as far as I can see), then there are already a plethora of government investment and infrastructure banks, funds, guarantee corporations, etc. We don't really need more, do we? It is envisaged as complementing the existing efforts of private industry, but, as Mr. Coyne points out, if the projects are commercially viable, then they probably don't need the government to invest in them.

Mr. Coyne has described it as a leveraged private equity fund, rather than a sovereign wealth fund. Is that really where we want to be parking $25 billion of much needed national capital? Wouldn't it be better utilized actually spending it on things we need? Aren't we experiencing a "rainy day", right now? Or - radical idea - directly spending it on people in need?

Mark Carney is a money guy. He knows how national finances work better than most. We are probably lucky to have him. He's certainly much better than the alternative: angry man Pierre Poilievre and the lacklustre Conservatives. But Carney seems to have converted into a consummate politician in a just a few short months, adept at telling people what they want to hear, and promising the moon while delivering a balloon. (And, in the process, largely abandoning his commitment to the environment, which was once a major plank of his philosophy.)

This is not one of his great ideas.

Winners and losers from the US-Israeli war on Iran

An analysis of the winners and losers in the US-Israel war on Iran involves a long list and a short list.

Among the losers can be listed: the Iranian people, the Iranian regime, the Lebamese people, the Gulf countries, the American people, the global economy and consumers everywhere, Donald Trump, Israel and Bejamin Netanyahu, Ukraine.

Winners? China, Russia, fossil fuel companies, drone producers and the weapons industry (which, coincidentally, includes Ukraine!), and maybe the renewable energy industry.

Good job, Donnie!

Proof that Canada's economy is too dependent on the USA

I came across.an interesting graph - I do like a good graph! - in an article about how maybe Justin Trudeau was not the economic Antichrist the Conservatives paint him as, but how external events were at least as important as home-grown policies in the challenges Canada's economy has had to face over the last decade or so. This is not an attempt to rehabilitatee Trudeau - the article is quite critical of the man and the policies, unfairly so I would say - merely an attempt to remove the spin and look at the Canadian economy dispassionately.

Anyway, the graph, above, shows the extent to which American tariffs and other US trade policies have affected employment in Canada, by splitting out employment in industries dependent on US demand from other industries.

The glaring difference is of course greatest since Trump 2.0 began in early 2025. But the effect has been in force since at least 2016 (Trump 1.0), and even continued apace during Joe Biden's administration (Biden, lest we forget, was also a keen America First guy). Employment in other industries has actually been very strong (and increasingly so) throughout the whole period.

If ever anything justified our current attempt to diversify our trade away from America, this chart is it.

Trump selects a Surgeon General nominee purely based on merit

And now, right back to... Donald Trump. 

Trump's new nominee for the vacant position for Surgeon General is someone called Nicole Saphier. You probably won't have heard of her unless you watch Fox News. She's a radioligist (so, almost a doctor) who does an occasional segment on the right-wing news show in which she mainly engages in culture war issues, and only incidentally in "medical" matters, where she espouses some rather iffy stances on vaccinations and transgender ideology, among other things.

But you only have to see a picture of Ms. Saphier to get a pretty clear idea of why Trump selected her. The man has a certain recognizable style. Are you seeing a trend here?

I kind of feel sorry for the poor woman in some ways. How is she supposed to head up a huge medical bureaucracy with zero experience and not much medical knowledge? What could possibly go wrong? There again, she could always say no...

UAE leaves OPEC - should we care?

As of tomorrow, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will officially leave the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the cartel that has historically exerted a strong influence over global oil prices through its ability to impose production quotas over its members. This is probably not going to change your life overnight. In fact, you're probably not even going to see any change in gas prices, at least in the near term, and certainly not while the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed. But in terms of geopolitics and the global economy, it could be significant in the longer term. It has been called "the beginning of the end of OPEC".

UAE is OPEC third or fourth biggest crude oil producer after Saudi Arabia, Iraq and maybe Iran, and has been a member of OPEC (and the expanded OPEC+ group) since 1967, soon after the group's inception in 1960. 

Crucially, though, the UAE's "spare" oil capacity is second only to Saudi Arabia's, making it an important "swing producer". It has a sustainable production capacity of 4.85 million barrels a day, but due to its OPEC quota it only actually produces 3.4 million barrels a day. OPEC (effectively Saudi Arabia) is therefore causing it to lose a lot of potential revenue which, given that oil accounts for about a third of its GDP, has always rankled. 

The UAE must also be painfully conscious that, as hydrocarbons are substituted by other energy sources, oil will not always be such a sure source of income. It makes sense, then, for the UAE to maximize its income from its oil reserves now, before demand craters.

UAE's exit widens its rift with Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader of OPEC, and deals a considerable blow to the influential oil producers' group and its ability to dictate oil prices. Freed from the constraints of OPEC, the UAE will almost certainly increase its crude oil output, which could have a significant effect on global prices.

The move is also seen as a win for Donald Trump, who has long railed against OPEC and its price-fixing. Trump needs gas and diesel prices to fall before the mid-term elections, and increasesd oil production by UAE could help with that.

UAE has long been a valued ally of the US, and even of Israel in recent years. UAE's decision to move now, with a US-Israeli war against Iran going on, can be no coincidence. (It has publicly complained that Saudi Arabia has offered it no support during Iran's bombardment, while Israel cleverly extended its protective Iron Dome to the Emirates.)

OPEC has gradually been losing influence for some years now. Back in the 1970s, it controlled over 50% of the world's oil; today, with the huge production increases in the USA, Canada, Russia and China, among others, that figure is closer to 30%. Several members have already defected: Indonesia left in 2016, Qatar left in 2019, Ecuador in 2020, and Angola in 2024. UAE's exit is a much bigger deal than any these. 11 members remain. And next? Almost certainly Venezuela.

Two tech billionaires face off

The press is fairly salivating over the prospect of two tech-bro billionaires facing off agaist each other in court in California. It involves betrayal, deceit and unbridled ambition. And lots and lots of money.

Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman used to be best buddies. Musk actually bankrolled much of OpenAI's early research in the heady days of 2015, back when it was an idealistic not-for-profit looking to save AI (and the world) from the rapacious designs of the less caring technology companies that were starting to emerge.

It soon became apparent, though, that a lot of money could be on the table for Altman and OpenAI, as the company's ChatGPT became the world's go-to AI platform, and Altman's altruistic vision wobbled. The company converted to a for-profit corporation last year, and is now valued at nearly a trillion dollars. Altman, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, and many others in the organization have become very rich indeed. (Altman's own fortune is estimated to be around $3 billion.)

Musk, the world's richest man, whose own net worth is heading inexorably toward the trillion dollar mark, has accused Altman and Brockman of double-crossing him, and of abandoning the company's founding vision of "an altruistic steward of a revolutionary technology". The picture of Musk, not known for altruism himself, taking the moral high ground is a confounding one. Plus, Musk now has his own AI company, xAI.

It's not going too well for Musk thus far. He has abandoned his original bid for $100 billion in damages after a series of pre-trial.rulings went against him. He is now seeking an unspecified amount of money to be paid into the charitable arm of Open AI (which still exists). He is also looking to oust Altman from OpenAI's board because, after all, this is personal.

The trial is expected to provide some riveting theatre as the two larger-than-life characters face off. As US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers says, "Part of this is about whether a jury believes the people who will testify and whether they are credible". In his opening remarks, Musk laid out his views: "The fate of civilization is at stake". Altman, for his part, gushed about Musk: "You're my hero". Yikes!

Musk has other ongoing legal challenges too: he was recently held liable by another jury for defrauding investors during his $44 billion takeover of Twitter in 2022. Altman and OpenAI are also being sued by residents of Tumbler Ridge, BC, after a mass shooting that they claim should have been prevented by OpenAI. It's a messy old (new) world out there.

Maybe we shouldn't really care that two such uncongenial figures are having at each other like slightly grubby quondam titans. But it is hard to look away.

How bad is the Iranian economy?

Here's an eye-opening article about the parlous state of Iran's economy after two months of battering by American and Israeli forces. Spoiler: it's substantially worse than I thought.

At least a million jobs have been lost directly due to the war, and 10-12 million - almost half of Iran's labour force - are at risk from the ripple effects.

Although Israel claims to have landed precision strikes on Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard facilities early in the war, in fact their air strikes destroyed or damaged some 20,000 civilian factories, hobbling about 20% of the country's manufacturing capacity, particularly in the essential pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals, aluminum, cement and steelmaking sectors. This has crippled Iran's main non-oil exports, and raised domestic prices for everything from plastics and pipes to fabrics, packaging and construction materials. There was little or no military targeting involved in this; this was an opportunistic Israel gleefully moving to incapacitate its arch-enemy's economy under cover of US bluster, while it thought it could get away with it.

Iran's internet has been largely shut down since the start of the war (or even before, during the domestic protests that preceded it), gutting all the small- and medium-sized businesses that rely on online sales. 

Before the war, Iran made about $98 billion in exports, just under half of it from oil. A good proportion of that is now gone, mainly due to the US blockade on exports, with no end in sight (although actually about half of Iran's non-oil trade goes overland and through Caspian Sea ports, and not through the blockaded Strait of Hormuz).

Pre-war, Iran relied substantially on the United Arab Emirates for up to a third of its imports. Since the US strikes, it has had to retaliate however it can, including strikes on UAE, leading that country to cut off all trade with Iran. No more imports.

The city of Kashan, where most of Iran's lucrative carpet production was centred, has all but closed down. Exports have plummeted and domestic sales petered out. Prices for synthetic fibres have surged by 30-50%, largely due to ongoing hits on Iran's petrochemical facilities.

Most new construction has ground to a halt, with priority going to the reconstruction of essential infrastructure. The price of iron sheeting has more than doubled. Savings of individuals and companies alike are starting to run out, those that had any.

Even with all that litany of grimness, Iranian officials are however still trying to reassure the public that the country can withstand all the economic pain. Certainly, if any country could, it is Iran. After decades of sanctions, the country has built up a lot of resilience, and is well-prepared for "worst case scenarios". It maintains large reserves of vital supplies, and even resources like electrical machinery, cement, iron and steel, for just such an emergency. The US has clearly been shocked by how resilient Iran has proved, although a bit more inquiry and less hubris could easily have alerted them to that.

Such reserves and resilience are not, of course, unlimited. While it is thought that Iran could still bounce back once the war ends, that would largely depend on whether international sanctions were lifted, and that in turn depends on a whole load of other things, things that are currently unknown. Whether Iran can outlast the United States - which has its own constraints and determining factors - is an open question.

Alternative climate conference gets under way in Santa Marta

I have neglected to mention it thus far, but I would be remiss to ignore the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels, happening right now in Santa Marta, Colombia.

With all that they need to come up with a more succinct name or acronym (FICJTAFF?), this seems like a wholly laudable attempt to rescue the climate action movement from the tyranny of the majority. While great things were once hoped for from the UN Climate Change Conferences (or COPS - Conference of the Parties), in recent years they have been increasingly taken over by oil-producing countries that either don't believe in, or don't care about, climate change.

The Netherlands and Colombia have been at the forefront of this new initiative. Over 50 countries are attending the Santa Marta conference, a so-called "coalition of do-ers", representing almost 50% of the global population. Sub-national actors, Indigenous Peoples, social and youth movements, and invited non-governmental organizations will also be represented. 

The USA, under the climate-denying Trump administration, is not even invited, and neither are a whole swathe of other potentially obstructive countries like Middle Eastern oil producers. There is no China, no Russia, to veto promising motions. 

Despite its embarrassing back-pedalling on climate issues under Mark Carney, Canada is indeed attending, although it is sending a team of negotiators rather than higher level government ministers. Along with Nigeria and Australia, it is one of the few oil and gas producers at the summit.

The concept is to see what progressive climate action ideas can be developed without the constant drag and naysaying of the more regressive elements. There will be no flashy binding global treaties, but instead is focussed more on actionable, non-consensus-based pathways. It is seen as a precursor to future negotiations, rather than a final decision-making body. It hopes to set targets and advance concrete pathways to transition away from fossil fuels, which increasingly seems like the only real solution to climate change.

Should we expect much from the conference, other than virtue-signalling and bromides? Is it just a choir preaching to itself? Maybe this first conference might not produce too much, but it will be interesting to see what momentum it generates. And, anyway, do you still expect anything from UN COP conferences?

To tell you the truth, it's nice to be reporting on something other than the United States right now. That feels like a win in itself.

Shells on a beach = death threat?

More US news, I'm afraid (it's hard to look away).

Soon after President Trump's initial attempt to go after ex-FBI boss and one-time nemesis James Comey fell through when the courts dismissed the case with prejudice, the man has prevailed upon his Justice Department to indict Comey all over again, this time claiming that Comey threatened his life. Because, more than anything else, Trump hates to be thwarted, and he will spend million of dollars of taxpayers' money to wreak vengeance.

And, if the last attempt at indictment was flimsy and poorly executed, this one's going to be a doozy. Comey's supposed "threat" was a picture he shared on social media about a year ago, quickly removed, of some seashells on a beach forming the numbers "8647".

Confused? So was I. Apparently, the "47" is supposed to represent Donald Trump (the 47th US president, get it?) And the "86" is apparently slang in some language or other for "remove" or "take out". (I don't know. I don't make this stuff up.) 

So, DOJ's allegation is that, by sharing the image, Comey was personally threatening to kill Donald Trump. A stretch? Just a bit. At worst, it was Comey's hamfisted attempt to call for Trump's impeachment or removal from office. It would be hard to argue that it was a call for his death. It's no secret that Comey dislikes Trump (and vice versa), but a call for assassination? Hardly.

Comey claims that he was not aware of the possible violent implications of the image, thinking it was just a political statement of some sort. (Why would a public person publicly share a political statement that they don't even understand?) He says he took it down from his Instagram page as soon as someone explained to him how it might be interpreted.

So, I guess we'll see whether putting a few shells on a beach constitutes a treasonous threat. It would be the damnedest thing, don't you think?

UPDATE

It turns out the term "86" is in regular use in the restaurant trade, particularly in New York, but it has little or nothing to do with threatenimg to kill someone.

What it actually refers to is when an item is out of stock and needs to be re-ordered or replaced. It was first used back in the 1930s, and there is some debate as to whether it was first used to refer to the 86th item on Delmonico restaurant's menu, which was always the most popular item and the first one to sell out, or to a speakeasy called Chumleys which had a side entrance at 86 Bedford, which was always the best exit to use if the police raided. 

Apparently, over time, the restaurant idiom was occasionally used metaphorically, to mean get rid of or fire someone, or just make something disappoear, nothing more sinister than that.

Either way, there seems no way that James Comey (or Trump, for that matter).would have had any knowledge of such an abstruse expression, if indeed that is what the "8647" is supposed to refer to.

NASA chief wants to make Pluto a planet again

Back in 2006, poor Pluto was officially demoted from a planet to a dwarf planet. Generations of school children who had learned the mnemonic "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" have had to re-learn it as "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nothing".

Not a big deal, you might think. But it was controversial then, and apparently it remains controversial to this day. The argument was that a planet has to fulfill three (admittedly rather arbitrary) criteria: to orbit the sun (not another planet), to be massive enough to have been made fully spherical by its own gravity, and to have cleared its orbit of debris. Pluto, they said, failed to fulfill the third criterion, sharing an orbit as it does with the asteroids, icy bodies and other dwarf planets of the Kuiper Belt. 

The curremt (Trump-appointed) NASA chief Jared Isaacman is particularly exercised by the subject, and is making it his mission to reinstate Pluto as a full planet. The odds are against it, though, as the decision rests with the  International Astonomical Union (IAU), a worldwide group of professional astronomers whose job it is to define and name celestial objects and surface features. (Isaacman, on the other hand, is a billionaire finance-bro and a "private astronaut" -  a typical Trump nominee.)

It probably shouldn't surprise us that a Trump appointee is looking to turn back progress. It won't surprise me too much if he turns out to be a flat-earther too.

Does MLS own the Vancouver Whitecaps?

Rumour has it that Major League Soccer (MLS) is considering relocating the Vancouver Whitecaps franchise to somewhere more profitable, like maybe Las Vegas. They say the "long-term health" of the league is at stake. They say that "stadium economics, scheduling restrictions and a lack of government and corporate support" will make keeping the Whitecaps in Vancouver very difficult.  

The current owners, a group of Canadian businessmen, have put the team up for sale, although they do say their priority is to keep the team in Vancouver. There are currently only two Canadian teams in the MLS league, Toronto (added as an expansion team in 2007) and Vancouver (added in 2011), and losing one would be pretty hard for the Canadian psyche. 

Although the Whitecaps had their most successful season ever last year, only falling to Miami in the championship game, and they currently sit second in the league this year, their on-field success has not translated into all-important revenue, in which stakes they sit at the very bottom of the league, trailing much worse clubs in the middle of the standings.

I confess the whole idea of "moving" a team from one city to another seems bizarre to me, coming from a British background. I can''t imagine "moving" Manchester City to Blackpool, or Chelsea to Portsmouth!? But I guess I just don't understand the franchise business model of North American sports. Certainly teams (or franchises) do get moved all the time: the Brooklyn Dodgers became the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals, the Washington Senators became the Texas Rangers, etc, etc.

But what is the role of MLS in this current case? Google AI says that "Major League Soccer (MLS) does not own the Whitecaps directly, though it operates under a single entity structure where owners are investors in the league". The best explanation I can find for this confusing claim comes from Medium.com: "Unlike the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), National Basketball Association (NBA), and National Hockey League (NHL), the MLS is considered a Single-Entity business model. This structure allow the teams to be considered "individual investors" of the league, allowing Major League Soccer to be the sole owners of all 29 teams and not be considered a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC)", although the article then goes on to question the legality of this Single-Entity status.

So, clear as mud. I still don't know how it works, but it does seem that MLS somehow has "full autonomy" over business deals, exclusivity player negotiations, and many other aspects. Weird.

Yet another productivity analysis

It's a constant taunt of the Canadian right wing that, after ten years of Liberal rule, Canada's productivity is poor (the worst in this cherry-picked category, the lowest in that, you know how it goes). The unstated implication is that the Conservatives, somehow, would have done a much better job. 

Productivity - GDP per capita, or sometimes per hour worked - has become the tub to be thumped in recent years by many in the business community, one metric to rule them all. But it's a notoriously blunt instrument, open to all manner of misinterpretations and vagaries.

The redoubtable Visual Capitalist has produced an updated analysis of global productivity, which yields some eye-popping, but actually pretty explicable, results. Way out at the top are not the USA or China, or even Sweden, but Ireland, Norway and Luxembourg. But this doesn't necessarily mean that Irish workers are much more efficient or hard-working than those in the rest of the world, or even that they are better at harnessing technology.

In the cases of Ireland and Luxembourg, their productivity dominance is almost entirely due to their status as tax havens. Both countries host the headquarters of many multinational companies, particularly in the pharmaceutical and technology sectors in Ireland's case and finance in Luxembourg's, so most of the work that generates such high productivity figures is actually done elsewhere. In both cases, productivity drops dramatically when measured using Gross National Income, rather than Gross Domestic Product.

In Norway's case, it's productivity is more to do with its high-value energy industry, although some of it is "genuine" productivity efficiency, and its adoption of capital-intensive and knowledge-based work. Most of the other (mainly European and Scandinavian) countries in the top ten or twenty similarly benefit from those same choices or circumstances.  

And Canada? In this particular listing of 37 countries, which is based on GDP per hours worked in purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars, Canada comes in at a middle-of-the-road No. 18. This is above the OECD average, and about the same as the UK, Italy and Spain. It is just below Australia, although significantly above the likes of Israel, Japan, New Zealand Mexico. Canada also comes in well below arch-rivals the USA which, at No. 7 according to this metric, is the only non-European country in the top 15. (China is not included in this analysis.)

In general, countries whose economies are more reliant on agriculture, tourism, or lower-value services tend to report lower productivity levels, while those which are more based on technology, finance, pharmaceuticals and energy typically show higher productivity. So, such lists are perhaps not all that useful.

White House Press Secretary makes a strangely prescient comment

As per usual with American politics, you just can't make this stuff up.

Minutes before a gunman burst into the White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington DC, guns a-blazing, a heavily-pregnant White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt made some rather prescient comments:

"This speech tonight will be classic Donald J. Trump. It will be funny. It will be entertaining. There will be some shots fired tonight in the room."

Now, that's not just prescient, it's also a very strange choice of words. Not to say downright suspicious. In different circumstances, Ms. Leavitt might well have been bundled off in a police car for her comments, baby bump and all. As Trump's sycophant-in-chief, though, she is presumably above suspicion.

Unless, of course, the shooting was staged, and Ms. Leavitt just blurted her words out accidentally or unthinkingly. Or, conceivably, she was being too cute by half (unlikely - "cute" is not an adjective that applies to her hawkish and aggressive public persona).

How the USA thinks of itself (and everyone else)

I've lost track of how many times I have written a post criticizing the tone-deafness of the Trump administration. By which I mean not just Trump himself, but everyone who clings to his coattails, believing that Trump's influence is enough to protect them from criticism and censure, and exempts them from the need to observe common courtesy and shared values.

Case in point: an internal Pentagon email from top policy advisor Elbridge Colby outlining measures the United States could take to chastise NATO members they see as difficult or insufficiently supportive of radical US military ventures.

Thus, countries like Spain, which has been outspoken in its opposition of Trump's illegal and ill-advised forays into unilateral invasion and regime change, could, the memo suggests, be suspended completely from the alliance (actually, it couldn't legally). Countries like the UK, which had the audacity to refuse the US use of its overseas bases, could be browbeaten by a public "review" of its claims to the Falkland Islands. Etc, etc.

This shows a mind-boggling ignorance of the rules of NATO (or an assumption that the US can just flout said rules with impunity). There is no requirement for other countries to follow America into its wars of choice - Section 5 of the NATO charter (which states that an attack against one member of the alliance should be considered an attack against all) only applies where member states are attacked by outside actors, not where a member state chooses to go to war unilaterally.

But the guy, whoever he is, is a high-ranking employee of the Pentagon. He must know (mustn't he?) that what he is suggesting is wrong - morally, legally, strategically, any way you want to think of it. But the US under Trump has its head so far up its arse that it cares not a jot for such niceties and inconveniences as the law and morality. That's the only explanation I can postulate for such arrant nonsense.

Plug-in solar is coming...

Plug-in solar is coming! I've seen that headline in multiple places recently. And it is kind of a big deal, in a small way.

So, what is plug-in solar anyway? It's "a simple, reliable way to save money by generating your own electricity" from small-scale modular solar panels that connect (via an inverter) to a standard power outlet in your home. It's an easy and affordable way to get started generating your own power. 

Solar panels can be put on any accessible flat surface, such as a balcony, in a front or back yard, or on a roof deck. Unlike a full-scale roof-top grid-tied system, installation is pretty straightforward and can be done without engaging a contractor and a whole lot of bureaucracy. Even renters and apartment dwellers can now reduce their grid dependence.

Plug-in panels come in a range of output sizes from 200W to 1,600W (as compared to a typical rooftop installation of 3,000W to 9,000W), and cost from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. It's not intended to power your whole home, merely to reduce load (particularly during peak times), and to save the consumer some money. Even a small 200W unit can power a fridge or overhead lighting, or be used to recharge laptops, phones, etc, or it can be used remotely to power camping appliances, a small boat, etc. Larger units can of course power larger and more power-hungry appliances.

The average payback time right now is about 5 years, and costs are expected to continue falling as market take-up increases. Annual savings depend on available sunshine hours and the cost of locally produced electricity.

Germany has been doing it for years, since the German government streamlined the rules for power generation without needing approval from electricity utilities back in 2019. The technology is tried, tested and safe. Germany remains the largest market - about 1 in 10 households there use some form of plug-in solar panels. Now, more and more other jurisdictions are starting to cut the red tape to make it easy for consumers to install a plug-in solar system. Plug-in solar is now legal in most EU states (25 of 27), excepting Sweden (puzzling) and Hungary (not so puzzling).r

Utah was the first US state to pass legislation allowing it, and many others have followed suit.(or are in the process). Britain recently changed its rules to allow, and even encourage, it. Embarrassingly, here in Canada, the Canadian Standards Association is still "evaluating" the technology, and there are still "regulatory barriers" to overcome. 

With the crunch on gas prices caused by the US war in Iran, there has never been a better time for plug-in solar.