Madagascar should not be involving itself with Russia

Some people, and some countries, just never learn. Various countries in Africa - Mali Niger, Burkina Faso - have succumbed to blandishments from Russia and agreed to one-sided partnerships in which Russia supplies weapons, training and military expertise to those countries (all military dictatorships) to aid them in their fight, mainly against Islamic insurgents.

In general, it hasn't gone well, in terms of successes in quelling sectarian unrest. (Frankly, I'm surprised that Russia has weapons or military personnel to spare at the moment even if these are mainly private militias.)

Now, another recently-minted military diactorship, Madagascar is looking to follow them down the road of "deepening ties" with Moscow. Russia has already started supplying weapons and instructors through its paramilitary operation, Africa Corps. Again, it surprise me that Madagascar, an economic basket case if ever there was one, has any money to spare for such a venture, although it does seem that countries can always find money for the military, however dire their circumstances. Unlike some of the other Sahel countries where Russia has inserted itself, Madagascar doesn't even have an Islamist problem; its ruling junta just wants to better control the country's beleaguered and exasperated populace.

Various onlookers, including the US's Africa Command are warning Madagascar not to go down the road towards increased Russian involvement, partly out of Cold War-style competition with Russia, but partly for the very real prospect that Russia's motives are never pure. It is almost certain that Russia's real motives are more along the lines of control of natural resources, and insinuation into, and infringement of, national sovereignty. 

China does it through trade and infrastructure projects; Russia prefers the military and security forces route. But you always know that both of them have ulterior motives. You know it will end with tears. Pick your poison.

Why try to impeach Hegseth now?

A vote for an impeachment motion against US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth - initiated, mark you, by Republican Representative Thomas Massie - has failed, blocked by loyal (read "feckless") Republicans. The vote was 211 to 204, and ALL Republicans apart from Massie trod the party line.

This was disappointing, of course. But then I found out that this was the OLD Trump-supporting House of Representatives that was voting. The "Blue Tsunami" of Democrats that was elected earlier this month have not taken their places yet.

Which, of course, begs the question of why Mr. Massie decided to bring forward his impeachment motion now, and not wait until the beginning of January, when he would have had a much more receptive and anti-Trump/Hegseth/war House.

Curiouser and curiouser.

This is not the end of the road, of course. A defiant Hegseth has been retrieved for now ("dodged the bullet", as many news outlets couldn't help but characterize it), and the Blue Tsunami will almost certainly revisit it in January, when its outcome is unlikely to be as close whether it has enough legs to achieve the 67% in the Senate is another matter, but it's more than possible - many Republicans really dislike Hegseth too, although there's a good proportion who would just like to see him sacked, not impeached.

Mark Carney veers still further to the right

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is still a very popular guy nearly two years after taking office (and that's not an easy task in fickle Canada). But the signs are that he has already lost his way.

He was voted in to power as a Liberal, and as someone who, it was hoped, could stand up to the depredations of Donald Trump. Since March 2025, he has governed as a conservative, taking the remaining wind out of the sails of an already-weak Conservative Party under Pierre Poilievre, and has gradually re-modelled the Liberal party around him. 

From abandoning carbon tax to expediting oil and gas pipelines, Carney has shown a Trumpian "drill, baby, drill" attitude to resource extraction. It didn't end there: he called for the wholesale privatization of airports, vastly increased spending on defence, tax cuts like the Productivity 2Mega Deduction and the Canada Growth Incentive, and cuts to spending on the civil service, all areas that used to be the province of conservative governments. He's also shown himslf more than willing to deal with dictators and rights-shy regimes (China, Turkey, UAE, Modi's India, etc) that Canada would have thought twice or more about, back in the day. It's all part of what some have dubbed it the "Carney Doctrine".

More recently, though, a few measures suggest that he is willing to take his conservatism still further, perhaps further than even Poilievre might have done.

Exhibit No. 1: A line item hidden deep in the latest federal budget, allocates a millions of dollars to "exploring" the idea of lifting the moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration in the western Arctic. Imposed by the Trudeau Liberal administration in 2016, the moratorium is stictly about environmentalism (constraining our carbon footprint and protecting the fragile Arctic ecosystem from development and potential oilspills), but Mr. Carney has left environmental responsibility long behind  in his rush toward development, particularly of the oil and gas sectors. Donald Trump did the same for the Arctic waters of Alaska. Are we now in the same boat as Trump? Carney says it's not about lifting the moratorium at all, but then why the need to explore it? He also says it's about "respecting the environment". Yeah, right!

Exhibit No. 2: Playing fast and loose with immigration and immigration statistics. (Now, where did he get that from, if not from Trump?) Soon after taking power, Carney slashed the official immigration targets. After all, he was elected on a platform of reigning in Justin Trudeau's admittedly out-of-control immigration policy. Now, though, he has announced that he plans to grant permanent residency to 200,000 temporary residents already in Canada, on a "one-off" basis, and that 200,000 (plus an additional 82,000 left over from a similar measure last year) is somehow not included in the allocation of 380,000 permanent residents already announced for 2026. So, we will end up with a total of about 680,000 this year, way more than the Trudeau administration ever dreamed of. Personally, I don't have a problem with this - we need more immigrants - but it is definitely evidence of Carney talking out of both sides of his mouth.

Has Carney lost the plot? That depends on what you think the plot is. The Carney Doctrine is all about "strategic autonomy", "principled pragmatism" (with who-knows-what principles) and "values-based realism" (with the values left conveniently vague). But it's also about re-setting expectations and, more recently, dressing up the wolf in sheep's clothing. As Iago said, so long ago, "Ha! I like not that!"

Swapping Stellantis for Rochel sounds like a win to me

It is finally official that Stellantis NV is selling its Branpton, Ontario, plant, althoigh rumours to that end have been rife for weeks. The Unifor union is apoplectic and complaining loudly about Stellantis' "betrayal". Both Prime Minister Mark Carney and Industry Minister Mélanie Joly have been very outspoken in their vilification of Stellantis, also employing the B word.

But, hold on, the plant is being sold to Canadian armoured vehicle maker Rochel. That's a win, isn't it? There may be some principled workers who object to manufacturing vehicles that may be used in wars and other conflicts. But the vast, vast majority of them probably won't care who they are working for so long as they have a job. Stellantis has also said it is willing to repay at least some of the federal subsidies they received in 2022, although not as much as they have used (it's not quite clear how much of the subsidies went to which Stellantis plant).

"More than 2,000 workers" have been laid off and idle (on "layoff pay") at the plant since 2023, although the plant employed about 3,000 in its full employment phase. You'd think Unifor would be pleased that someone has stepped in to replace the feckless Stellantis. Surely some employment is better than none? And the kicker? It's a Canadian company replacing a foreign company.

I did see one Unifor spokesperson complaining that, instead of 2,000 employees, Rochel would only be employing a few hundred, and other industry analysts have echoed that concern. That might be a valid issue (although still better a few hundred than zero). But Rochel CEO Roman Shimonov is upbeat about employment: "Our goal is to employ thousands of people, and we'll definitely give the first priority to Brampton people".

So, are the concerns overblown? If so, what's not to like?

Will Self's Umbrella is challenging but rewarding

I've read a few of Will Self's books (The Quantity Theory of Insanity, Great Apes, The Book of Dave) before, but never anything like his 2012 tour-de-force Umbrella.

It's a Modernist stream-of-consciousness masterpiece set in a mental asylum over a hundred years or so, and focussing largely on a particularly quirky long-time patient, Audrey De'Ath (or Death, or Deeth, or Dearth, or Deerth: it varies), and a staff psychiatrist, Zach Busner. Like a slightly-more-accessible Ulysses, there are few paragraphs, some idiosyncratic punctuation, and many long, obscure or colloquial words. Thoughts and descriptions unfold, and then are hijacked or distracted before they reach their conclusion. Vernacular slang and popular songs interrupt verbose flights of fancy. Technical medical and psychological descriptions merge with poignant literary minutiae. And all of it shifting seamlessly between the decades without any warning, sometimes seemingly in mid-sentence.

It's a wild cornucopia of clashing styles, often verging on poetry. But it works, and it's unputdownable.

Just a few short clips, to give a flavour of the riches contained:

On he comes ... and still the deep throat gapes in front of him, a gullet of light-stripes indented with bands of pockmarks - the original plasterers' decorative scheme - or else scattered with medallions and stone-rustic quotes seeped-upon-brown.

You'll be needing one, Busner, Whitcomb had said - a jolly arsehole, his long face a fraction: eyes divided by mustache into mouth - else the patients'll think ... Think what? Think what?!

In the submarine hospital all is agitation, the fin-flip along corridor after corridor after corridor, flowing in and out of recesses and embrasures, swirling around buttresses and foaming down the salmon run of the staircases, at the bottoms of which it dissolves in a spray of tics and jerks and grimaces.

So, a challenging but rewarding read. Curiously, though, it became less challenging as it progressed. I don't think this was just me getting used to his style, although there may have been an element of that too. It's almost like Mr. Self felt sorry for his readers, and thought he had punished them quite enough after the first however many pages. Or maybe he just found the initial style too exhausting. Certainly, the style seemed to change after the first 50 pages or so - still erudite and self-consciously literary, but less aggressively modernist and Joycean. It actually became more enjoyable as a result.

Doug Ford digs himself a hole

Did Ontario Premier Doug Ford just write his epitaph?

Already hightly unpopular after a horrible ten years in power, Ford seems to think that he can just brush people off with throwaway comments, à la Trump. But Ford is no Trump, and even Trump can't get away with throwaways any more, try as he might.

Responding to student protests after Ford's callous tuition hikes and cancellation of OSAP grants, a clearly rattled Ford shot back, "These kids are so naïve. They should be ... thanking the government for just investing". He blathered on, digging himself still deeper, "They read the social media and half the people on social media [are] a bunch of looney tunes. They all run out like sheep. Give your heads a shake, kids." 

Well, I guess very few of those "kids", or the "half the people on social media" voted for him, or are ever likely to in the future, so maybe he doesn't mind pissing them off. But everyone else is watching too, and now it's all over both halves of social media. 

Ford has always been insensitive and hard-hearted, partly because he is so out of touch with the poor of his province, born as he was into a wealthy family. Now, he's just reminding people of that. Ford has got as far as he has by being self-consciously "folksy". But this is not folksy; this is tone-deaf and soulless.

As provincial NDP leader Marit Styles put it, "Give your head a shake, Doug".

The murky quagmire of Israeli politics

It feels like I've been writing about Benjamin Netanyahu forever, and none if it has been good. The guy is a criminal and a menace to society. And, although he would no doubt call me antisemitic if he were ever to read my comments (because that's what he always does to deflect any and all criticism), his religious and cultural beliefs have never been at issue. It's his politics I dislike.

Now, though, after Israel's recent general election, Bibi's crooked and racist rule looks like it is finallly grinding to a halt. The October 27th election actually ended in a stalemate, with neither Netanyahu's religious-nationalist coalition nor Gadi Eisenkot's opposition grouping achieving a majority vote, leaving neither man with a clear oath to.power.

Enter Israel's long-standing President, Isaac Herzog. The presidency, in Israel's Byzantine political system, is a largely ceremonial role, but one thing it is responsible for is the nomination of a new government after an election. And Herzog has chosen Eisenkot's bloc, even though it gained slightly fewer votes than Netanyahu's. This was largely on the back of endorsements from Israel's small Arab parties, which have supported Eisenkot (or, rather, opposed Netanyahu), even though he has publicly vowed not to join forces with these same Arab parties! Like I said, Byzantine.

So, who is this Eisenkot? 

Eisenkot is 66 years old and the son of Moroccan immigrants. (Some of Netanyahu's supporters branded him as a "Misrahi Moroccan" and a "monkey", during the election debates, which gives some of the flavour of the nastiness of Israeli politics.) He grew up in Tiberias and Eilat, far from the centre of political power in Jerusalem, a consummate outsider. He had a storied career in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), and worked his way up the hard way to become Israel's top general, and chief of staff to Netanyahu.

His 25-year old son was killed by an explosive device in northern Gaza in 2023 and he also lost two of his nephews in the conflict, and this seems to have galvanized his move into politics. He has vowed to "continue the mission" in Gaza, so don't expect much of a change on that front. But he has accused Netanyahu of endangering democracy, so maybe we can hope for some reform there.

The main point is that Eisenkot is not Netanyahu. But he is far from being the anti-Netanyahu. He is willing to start a commission of inquiry into the security failures of October 7th (which Netanyahu has long avoided), and he will ensure that ultra-Orthodox Jews will not be able to avoid mandatory national service. But he is almost as hawkish as Netanyahu when it comes to the operation in Gaza and his attitudes towards the great enemy Iran. He too rejects a two-state solution to the Palestine problem, although he has vowed to crack down on settler violence in the occupied West Bank.

Eisenkot now has 28 days (with a possible 14 day extension) to try to cobble together a functional government. But his options are stark: either join together with the Arab parties that have supported him (but which he has refused to conscion thus far), or hold his breath and negotiate with some of the smaller radical far-right ultra-Orthodox parties.

It is, then, far from a slam-dunk that Eisenkot will be able to make this work. And, waiting in the wings is the shadowy figure of Netanyahu, down and dogged by long-standing corruption charges, but still not out.

To compute or not to compute

In recently years, the word compute has gone through quite an evolution. Or maybe an augmentation.

It used to be just a verb, meaning to calculate, or to use a computer. It's been in use in English since at least the 14th century (computer has been in the English lexicon since the 17th century, but meaning a person who calculates, rarher than a machine or programmable device).

Nowadays, though, compute is more likely to be used as an adjective (or a "noun adjunct") to mean relating to processing power, hardware or even resources required to run programs. It is particularly used in relation to cloud infrastructure and artificial intelligence. Thus, "We need more compute power", "the amount of computer capacity", "compute time fell dramatically". It can even be used by tech types as a kind of group noun, as in "we need more compute". It fairly howls of tech bro.

I know it's a relatively new usage, and I'm not necessarily against the evolution of the language per se (except where that happens due to sloppiness and errors, like the new meanings of momentarily, fulsome, etc). Somehow, though, it still sounds awkward and ostentatious. In most cases, existing words like computing and computer would work just as well; there is just no need to invent a new connotation of an existing word.

But then, inventing is what tech bros do, I guess. I kind of just wish they would stay in their own lane.