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 just 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, amd the.Conservatives lost 15.of their 22, with ascendant Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru becoming the largest part, although Reform UK did better there, taking 34 seats (upnfrom zero). In Scotland, the Scottish National party retained their dominance, 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.

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 to do with regional municipal politics. Maybe it makes no logical sense, but this 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. Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is many people's favourite to replace Starmer, but Burnham is not an elected MP (a pre-requisite for the leadership position).

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.

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 uproot and destroy 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.

The orders came directly from Bezalel Smodrich, one of the most hawkish members of the Israeli cabinet. He 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 became officially sanctioned. (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 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 diffferent situation.

The outbreak of hantavirus on a Dutch cruise ship in the South Atlantic is a localized concern, and being dealt with in a rational, sensible way. As a World Health Organization spokesperson puts 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 requires extended close-quarters or intimate exposure.

It is thought (but not proven) that the first 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.

Hantaviruses like the Andes variant cause generic flu-like symptoms (fatigue, fever, muscle aches, occasionally diarrhea and vomiting), which can make it 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. 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 Angency 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 administratation 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.