News roundup, 3 April 2025

- Donald Trump's latest round of tariffs are in place. There are no new ones for Canada, but a 25% levy on vehicles and vehicle parts from this country is still in place. There is a lot of confusion on exactly what is covered, since the tariffs won't apply to parts that comply with the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement - until the regime comes up with a way of applying tariffs to the non-US content of the parts. In response, Chrysler's parent company Stellantis is closing their assembly plant in Windsor for two weeks as of this coming Monday; it's also expected to significantly increase the price of vehicles. Dealerships are reporting a surge in sales as people try to get their purchases under the wire before the tariffs take effect. A complete list of tariffs by country may be seen here; markets are not responding favourably.

- Along with the NDP and the Bloc, the Greens have the potential to suffer from the renewed popularity of the Liberals under Mark Carney. Elizabeth May's riding is now considered a toss-up between her and the Liberal candidate. And in the Winnipeg-area riding of Elmwood-Transcona, the Liberals could actually be the spoiler.

- The conviction of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen on corruption charges and her being barred from political office as a result is causing a predictable stir. This is not limited to far-right leaders; one French political scientist, Ronald Hatto, thinks that the ban may be a mistake and could lead to unrest. While the Guardian's Georgios Samaras does not go that far, he warns that the French left needs to move quickly to keep Le Pen's protégé Jordan Bardella from exploiting the outrage and winning the presidency.

- Hot on the heels of Paul Chiang being forced to drop out of the race over injudicious comments about the suggestion that people collect a bounty from the Chinese state on his Conservative opponent, the Conservative candidate in another GTA riding is having to drop out for similar reasons. Don Patel, who was running in Etobicoke North, had indicated support for a Facebook post that called for certain folks to be sent back to India so that "PM Modi can take care of these non-sense people". Patel is actually the fourth Tory candidate to drop out in recent days.

- Hungary has announced that they're pulling out of the International Criminal Court. And no, they aren't going to hand over Netanyahu first; to the contrary, they're welcoming him to their country for an official visit.

News roundup, 2 April 2025

 - A wide range of tariffs are set to be announced today by the Trump regime, taking effect immediately. Trump is calling this "Liberation Day". Some background info here. A resolution before the US Senate from Virginia senator Tim Kaine is expected to make things awkward for Republicans representing states expected to take a hit from the tariffs, but won't have a real impact even if it passes, since it is nonbinding.

- Mark Carney plans to carve out an exemption for New Flyer in the countertariffs imposed on US manufacturing; meanwhile the company is working towards all buses for the Canadian market being assembled here.

- Former parliamentary reporter Rachel Gilmore had been asked by CTV to do an election-related fact-checking segment on their morning show, but the network cancelled the segment after a single episode following pressure from the Conservatives and their fellow travellers.

- The cancellation of the carbon tax took effect yesterday. This is expected to bring some savings to consumers, but preventing backsliding on emissions will require measures that may well cost more overall in terms of public funds. The question I've never been able to find a clear answer to, though, is this: If tax relief is politically necessary, why not provide said relief by reducing or eliminating the GST (or PST for provinces) rather than the carbon tax? That way everyone sees relief, not just those who drive. I guess they're afraid of worsening the urban-rural divide, but I think that divide is basically beyond healing at this point anyway.

- The Trump regime has admitted that they shipped an innocent man to their contracted prison in El Salvador due to what they call an "administrative error". They say it's now out of their hands, though, as he's no longer in US custody.

- Wisconsin held an election for a vacant seat on the state supreme court yesterday. A liberal judge squeaked a victory despite Elon Musk having spent millions of dollars on her opponent's campaign.

- Western Australia's police force has repurposed a Maserati seized from a repeat driving offender into a publicity device to warn people not to drive like idiots.

News roundup, 1 April 2025

- French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has been banned from running for political office for five years after being convicted of illegally siphoning millions of euros in public funds for her own party's use. She also received a four year suspended sentence. Predictably, Le Pen as well as her fellow deplorables around the world are having a conniption, saying that the decision saying the decision is politically motivated. Admittedly, it is very convenient for Emmanuel Macron, but it's a bit of a stretch to think the whole court system is in his pocket. A recent poll indicates that a majority of French citizens think the court ruled fairly, bit it's a slimmer majority than one might like (57%).

- The Liberal candidate in Markham-Unionville, Paul Chiang, has withdrawn from the race following his unfortunate remarks about how someone ought to claim a bounty on his Tory opponent. Probably a good move, especially since the RCMP is now looking into the matter.

- The University of Winnipeg is the latest post-secondary institution to face a financial crunch, partly as a result of cuts to international student visas. Last week the university's president brought up a clause in the faculty's collective agreement that could allow for layoffs. The fact that universities across the country are facing the same problem make this a bad time for academics.

- The Sioux Valley Dakota Nation has banned provincial courts from holding sessions on its jurisdiction until a suitable facility can be built. Community leaders say that what has been done up until now, which is for the court to use the community's mature student centre for its semi-monthly hearings, is not satisfactory because the student centre does not have the security measures needed to handle some of the violent criminals the court is dealing with (such as partitions separating the accused from witnesses). This is especially unfortunate because the circuit court arrangement was designed to make the courts more accessible to the community.

- The Green Party is calling for Canada's military reserves to be expanded by 20,000 people. Not an April Fool's joke; that's just the world we live in now. The party's co-leader Jonathan Pedneault made the announcement in Whitehorse yesterday, saying in addition that he wants to create a 120,000 person civil defence corps.

- A Canadian has been detained in the Dominican Republic because his name was similar to someone whose name was on a checked bag that was full of drugs. Maybe those who aren't deterred by the climate footprint of air travel or the Dominican Republic's problematic human rights record should look at this as another reason to stay home.

News roundup, 31 March 2025

- The new tariffs that the Trump regime is going to impose on automobiles and parts is going to impact all automakers, including American ones, but one automaker is expected to be impacted a lot less than the others. Guess which one.

- The regime is continuing with their efforts to curb activism by international students. Hundreds of students have already had their visas revoked, apparently for participating in protests against the war in Gaza. Last week Rumeysa Öztürk, a Turkish-born PhD student, was arrested by masked ICE officers and taken away in an unmarked vehicle; she had co-authored this op-ed for the university's newspaper last year, which I guess in their eyes constitutes "supporting Hamas".

- A fan was removed from the Toronto Blue Jays' home opener on Thursday for wearing a "Canada Is Not For Sale" hat, with security guards citing a ban on "political statements". Following the inevitable bad publicity, the organization has apologized to the man, and attributed the incident to an "error" on the part of staff. Some folks on the related Reddit thread have their doubts, though, saying that the Jays' chair Ed Rogers is a big Trump supporter and that security was going around in the stands stopping people from booing the American anthem.

- The Conservatives are doing their utmost to stop their supporters from saying the quiet part out loud. At Poilievre rallies across the country, they are seizing items such as MAGA hats and signs (as well as more mundane items such as knives and e-cigs) from people attending the events, presumably not wanting to give the media the opportunity to remind the non-crazy part of the Canadian population what the Cons are actually like. Stuff like this adds to fears among party insiders of division and dysfunction within the organization.

- The National Post is claiming to have found evidence of plagiarism in Mark Carney's 1995 PhD thesis. Funny thing is, most of the academics who actually went on record for the article dismiss the accusations. I guess the Post hopes that most people won't read beyond the headline.

- Paul Chiang, the Liberal candidate in the suburban GTA riding of Markham-Unionville, is facing criticism and calls for his withdrawal from the race after suggesting in a Chinese-language news conference that people should claim the bounty that China has placed on his Tory opponent, Joe Tay.

- The Vancouver Auto Show broke attendance records despite calls by the MAGAts for a boycott over their exclusion of Tesla from the event.

- A gospel singer is facing criticism for his fundraising pitch after delivering a speech to the 109th Pentecostal Assemblies for the World Convention in Baltimore last summer. Following the speech he asked church ushers to lock the doors until he got $40,000 in donations.

- China hopes to have a 100 megawatt hybrid fission-fusion reactor operating by 2030. The idea is to use the neutrons from deuterium-tritium fusion to induce fission in uranium; since no chain reaction is involved it is considerably safer than many fission reactors and no enrichment is necessary (natural or even depleted uranium would suffice). If this could be achieved, this could be an important stepping stone to a pure fusion reactor.

News roundup, 28 March 2025

- Protesters in the UK who broke into a factory owned by an Israeli weapons manufacturer, Elbit Systems last year, causing over a million dollars worth of damage, have been locked up indefinitely under anti-terrorism legislation. Evidently the British are going along with the Americans and treating politically motivated vandalism as if it were violence against actual people (which is usually what is usually meant when one speaks of "terrorism"). Some of the protesters have even been denied access to lawyers. I have to assume that the reason for such draconian measures is that the protesters have been effective - nine British companies have cut ties with the firm, and the landlords of one Elbit site in Leicester have sold the property.

- Donald Trump initially nominated Elise Stefanik, a Republican member of Congress from New Jersey, to be the next ambassador to the UN. However, he has now withdrawn the nomination - apparently due to fears that the Republicans' majority in the House is a bit to slim for comfort.

- When Marjorie Taylor Greene was asked a question by journalist Martha Kelner of UK outlet Sky News about the scandal now being referred to in some circles as "Signalgate", Greene refused to answer and told her to "go back your country".

- Jason Stanley, a Yale University professor and author of a book entitled How Fascism Works, has given up his post to take one at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, saying that he has lost confidence in American academia's ability and/or willingness to resist the regime. He says that the last straw was when Columbia University agreed to take several disturbing measures, including a crackdown on campus protests as well as "internal reviews" of some academic programs, in order to retain millions of dollars in federal funding. If that's not a warning to take seriously, I don't know what is.

- A BBC reporter was arrested and deported from Turkey as a "threat to public order" following his coverage of widespread protests against the government. Expect the US to do the same thing to foreign journalists before long.

- A Manitoba judge has ordered CityNews journalist Morgan Modjeski to hand over the raw footage of an on-camera interview with a man at a rooming house in the aftermath of a shooting there. Modjeski had challenged an order to hand the footage over on the grounds of protecting journalistic sources, however the judge ruled that this was irrelevant because the man interviewed was not an anonymous source. His lawyer, though, is concerned about the precedent set by effectively turning journalists into tools of law enforcement.

- The Canadian Research Insights Council (CRIC), an industry group for polling agencies, is warning about an organization called  ERG National Research, which is not a member of the group. ERG has been texting people with election polls, and then asking for their names, something polling agencies generally don't do. The CEO of CRIC has done some digging, but found little about the organization other than the fact that it shares a mailing address with an organization called ElectRight, and that the two organizations list each other as "communication service providers".

- A man has been charged with dangerous driving following an investigation into a crash on St. Mary's Road last October in which a Dodge Charger left the road while doing 213 km/h in a 60 km/h zone and collided with a building. The (surprisingly uninjured) driver fled the scene on foot; I have to assume that he tried to claim that the vehicle was stolen and the delay in pressing charges resulted from an investigation into this claim.

News roundup, 27 March 2025

- Winnipeg police now believe that the woman hitherto known as Mashkode Bizihiki’ Ikwe ("Buffalo Woman") was Ashlee Shingoose of St. Theresa Point First Nation, who went missing in March 2022. Moreover, based on when she is believed to have been killed and the location of the bin where she was dumped, they now believe that her remains were taken to the Brady Landfill. This does offer at least some hope that something of her will be found. 

- Jagmeet Singh admits that the NDP faces "massive challenges" in the coming election, as the anti-Conservative vote is coalescing almost entirely around the Liberals. Former leader Tom Mulcair sums it up in terms of what is known as "the ballot question"; the threat from the US is the sole deciding factor for most voters, and it's increasingly turning into a two party race (Mulcair notes that the Bloc is struggling as well).

- Wildfires in South Korea have killed at least 24 people and destroyed a 1,300 year old temple in Uiseong City, though fortunately relics from the temple were removed in advance of the fire. Wildfires have historically not been common in the country, and this is the biggest death toll from such fires that the country has experienced.

- Eascan Automation Inc., a Winnipeg-based company that provides custom-built industrial robots to manufacturers, has laid off a third of its workforce owing to the fact that while most of their clients are Canadian, the products they manufacture are heavily dependent on the US market, meaning they're not in a hurry to upgrade their equipment right now.

- Immigration lawyers are advising Canadians living in the US to avoid international travel for the time being, given the increasingly unpredictable nature of ICE. One Toronto-based lawyer points out that even people who successfully got green cards after having previously gotten into trouble have had their old mistakes brought up at the border when they try to reenter; in addition, there is a danger that anything you might have ever posted online could be dug up and used against you. Myself, if I were giving advice, I wouldn't be advising against international travel. Quite the contrary - I'd advise any Canadian - or other foreign citizen - living in that benighted country to take a one-way international trip as soon as possible.

- It seems that the Atlantic journalist who was inadvertently sent sensitive military plans was not the biggest security risk in that chat group. Steve Witkoff, who serves as an envoy to the Middle East as well as Ukraine, was part of the chat group - and he was actually in Moscow at the time it was sent.

- The estranged wife of slain California fire captain Rebecca Marodi has been captured alive by Mexican authorities and sent back to the US to face trial for first degree murder. She has pleaded not guilty. Somehow I doubt she'll get it knocked down to manslaughter like she did last time she did something like that, though.

News roundup, 26 March 2025

- So it appears that the risks associated with Trump regime's use of the Signal app are not limited to inadvertently sending sensitive information to the wrong person. Apparently the Pentagon is now warning that the app is not as secure as it's supposed to be anyway; it seems that the end to end encryption can be bypassed by clever hackers, potentially including state actors.

- Besides the entirely justified anger at the US for electing a guy who is threatening to invade his neighbours and is in the process of tanking the world economy and making climate change even worse than it was going to be already, there is another factor keeping tourists away - fear. Fear that an innocent mistake regarding the terms of your visa could get you shackled and hauled off to some hellhole prison for an indeterminate period, even if you had previously thought you were immune to that sort of thing due to being a white person from a well-off country. That suits the regime just fine, of course; I suspect that they want to reduce the amount of contact between their own citizens and the rest of the world as much as possible. After all if an impoverished little country like the DPRK can survive almost total isolation, they must figure it should be a cinch for a wealthy country like the US. Especially if they can pick up some Lebensraum (not to mention resources) in the form of Canada and Greenland. 

- The Canadian Security Intelligence Service says Pierre Poilievre's campaign for the Conservative leadership received assistance from the Indian government. While CSIS is careful to say that it hasn't been shown that Poilievre knew about said assistance, this might go some distance to explain why he refuses to get a security clearance.

- China has freed employees of an American corporate due diligence firm who had been detained two years previously, apparently as a way of attracting new investment. What's interesting, though, is the circumstances of their detention - their employer had been "conducting unauthorized statistical investigations". It seems they may have feared that this would reveal a bit too much about human rights abuses.

- Just as surely as the fossil fuel industry, the beef industry knew decades ago that their industry is a major contributor to climate change - and like the fossil fuel industry, they did their darnedest to keep this information hidden from the public. 

- Joe Rogan, who a few days ago was saying that the Trump regime's behaviour towards Canada was "ridiculous", has now fallen in line. He had been scheduled to work as a commentator at a UFC event in Montreal in May, but now says he'd "rather go to Russia". I guess the MAGA crowd made enough threats to his livelihood - and his life - to get him to reconsider his views on Canada.

- The former CAO of Gilbert Plains, Manitoba had an arrest warrant issued after failing to appear in court on charges of faking a cyberattack in order to defraud the municipality of more than half a million dollars. I guess her lucky VLT didn't come through in time to pay the money back.

News roundup, 25 March 2025

- The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs is calling for the search of Prairie Green Landfill to continue, in the hope of finding the remains of the woman known as Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe ("Buffalo Woman"). This may be a tall order, since the information publicly available only gives the approximate time of her murder (mid-March 2022) and the approximate location where she was dumped (a bin behind a business on Henderson Highway, though it's possible that the police know which business and haven't made it public). But it's definitely worth looking further into. 

- Danielle Smith is coming under considerable criticism for the interview she gave to far-right news site Breitbart, in which she asked that Trump hold off on the tariffs until after the election so as to improve the Conservatives' chances. Whether the publicity over this interview will help the Cons is another question. It's not likely to help Smith, but she isn't up for reelection for a couple more years so maybe she hopes Albertans will have forgotten by then.

- Democratic Congresswoman Jamine Crockett made a statement in support of the "Tesla takedown" rallies, which happen to coincide with her birthday on the 29th of March. But when she said that "all I want to see happen on my birthday is for Elon to be taken down", this led to a statement by Attorney General Pam Bondi that Crockett should "tread very carefully" with such statements. 

- Jeffrey Goldberg, who writes for the Atlantic, got added to a Signal discussion group that included several prominent figures in the Trump regime, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He ended up becoming privy to secret plans for bombing in Yemen in advance of the raid after Hegseth casually spilled the beans in the discussion group. One wonders if Hegseth is keeping his promise to quit drinking if appointed.

- Prepac, a manufacturer of ready-to-assemble furniture founded in Delta, BC in 1979 has shut down its Canadian manufacturing, citing "an altered economic environment" for the move. Unifor, which represented the workers at the Delta plant, is calling for a nationwide boycott of the company. Prepac was family-owned until Torquest, a private equity company, snapped it up in 2019; two years later it opened a plant in North Carolina, which will become their main site.

- DNA testing firm 23andMe has filed for bankruptcy, having apparently been unable to recover from the bad publicity resulting from a data breach two years ago. This has led to fears that people's genetic data might fall into the hands of folks who might have other things in mind than people's wellbeing (like, say, health insurance companies). The company's privacy policy says that any company buying the company's data is bound by the same policy; the only problem is, when they adopt 23andMe's privacy policy, they adopt the line in said policy that says it can be changed at any time. That doesn't sound reassuring. California's attorney general has even released a consumer alert complete with instructions on how to delete your account.

- The concept of a "Dyson swarm", in which vast numbers of solar collectors are placed around the Sun to form a huge spherical shell, has been around for a long time. The question of what that would do to the Earth's climate hasn't really been looked at until recently. But it seems that if such a swarm were placed just outside Earth's orbit, it would heat the planet's surface by an average of 140 K (or 140°C), enough to boil the oceans. If it were placed further out, say just past Mars, it would still heat the Earth by about 3°C, and building all those solar collectors would require about 10²³ kg of silicon, meaning a heck of a lot of asteroid mining.

- A woman was run down in the parking lot of a kids' recreational facility in suburban Winnipeg over the weekend, after standing in an open parking spot to hold it for another person. Apparently a 40 year old woman became so incensed at this that she ran her over, then backed out and fled the scene.

News roundup, 24 March 2025

- As expected, Mark Carney has called a general election for the 28th of April. Carney is running to replace outgoing Liberal MP Chandra Arya in the Ottawa suburb of Nepean, a riding that happens to be right next door to Pierre Poilievre's. Notably Nathalie Provost, a survivor of the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre and prominent gun control activist, is running for the Liberals in the riding of Châteauguay–Les Jardins-de-Napierville, something sure to send Alberta into conniptions. Speaking of Alberta, their premier apparently tried to convince the Trump regime to put tariffs on hold pending the outcome of the election. She vehemently denies that this constitutes asking for the US to intervene in the election though.

- A new poll in Manitoba by Probe Research lends support to the idea that the federal NDP could face a wipeout in the province. In Winnipeg, the Liberals have the support of 54% of decided and leaning voters; the NDP is at 9%.

- Green card holders in the US are being warned against leaving the country for fear that they won't be allowed back in.

- A food bank in BC is benefiting from the boycotting of American produces, as stores unable to sell the products are donating them so as to at least get the tax break for the donation.

- The young man facing terrorism charges over antisemitic graffiti apparently suffers from "global developmental delay" as well as ADHD. Shades of Stevie from Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent.

- The parents of the 6 year old Texas child who died of "freedom freckles" last month are telling people not to vaccinate their kids out of panic, saying that measles still isn't that bad (after all, all their other kids survived) and that the vaccine is somehow worse.

- A 57 year old Florida woman has been charged with aggravated animal cruelty following an investigation to an incident at Orlando's airport in December. It appears that she showed up to board a flight with her 9 year old miniature schnauzer in tow, only to be told that she didn't have the right paperwork to board with the dog. So she did what I assume she figured that any reasonable person would do and drowned the hapless creature in a toilet before going to board her flight. Unfortunately for her she discarded the dog's body along with a collar with her name on it in the garbage in the washroom, where it was found by cleaning staff.

News roundup, 21 March 2025

- Manitoba's efforts to address the homelessness crisis are starting to pay off, albeit slowly. About a dozen people from five encampments in downtown Winnipeg have been moved into housing. The availability of housing units is the main bottleneck, though housing minister Bernadette Smith says that 40 more units are expected to become available soon.

- Manitoba's 2025 budget forecasts a deficit that could range from $800 million to as high as $1.9 billion, depending on how badly things go with Trump's tariffs. Some of the costs result from efforts being made to cushion the economy against the tariffs; there is also a lot of money going into infrastructure. As it should be, though I suspect that there will be pressure for austerity soon enough.

- Amtrak's CEO, Stephen Gardner, is resigning from his position, saying that he is doing so "to ensure that Amtrak continues to enjoy the full faith and confidence of this administration". Given that Elon Musk has called for Amtrak to be privatized, it's probably a futile move, unfortunately.

- Germany as well as the UK have issued travel warnings about the US to their citizens, advising that they are not guaranteed entry to the country even with a visa or travel waiver and that they often detain people, sometimes in appalling conditions, for small errors or misunderstandings.

- Austin's efforts to increase housing availability by relaxing zoning laws are paying off in spades, as thousands of new apartments have been built and rents in the city have declined 22%. No doubt landlords are frantically lobbying their state legislature to limit the city's ability to do this.

- An examination of Tesla's accounting practices has found that some 1.4 billion dollars can't be accounted for. Normally this would mean serious trouble for the company, but since the SEC is being kneecapped by Trump and Musk, that isn't likely to happen. That said, the company's share price continues to decline, even after Trump's commerce secretary Howard Lutnick went on Fox News to beg viewers to buy the stock. Meanwhile vandalism at Tesla dealerships continues, most recently in Hamilton where 80 cars were damaged.

- The 2025 World Happiness Report has concluded that Finland's people are the world's happiest, followed by Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden. The US has dropped to its lowest ever position at 24, just behind the UK. Canada is also declining, falling to 18th place.

- A fire at an electrical substation forced the closure of Heathrow Airport, the world's 5th busiest. Diverted flights have led to cascading disruptions around the world due to aircraft and crews not showing up where they're needed.

- Some of Trump and Musk's more vocal supporters are finding themselves getting "swatted". I can't say I advocate this, since such a move can have fatal consequences (possibly for someone other than the target of the attack) but nobody should be surprised when this sort of thing happens.

News roundup, 20 March 2025

- Prime Minister Mark Carney is widely expected to issue an election call this weekend, with the election to be held on the 28th of April. Presumably he wants to take full advantage of the Liberals' recent surge in the polls.

- China has slapped tariffs on numerous Canadian exports, mostly agricultural products, in retaliation for Canada's 100% levy on cheap EVs from that country. Some are calling for the EV tariffs to be lifted, both to get relief from China's retaliation and to spite Tesla; the Canadian auto industry isn't keen on the idea of course, but given what Trump is doing the Canadian industry might not have much of a future anyway.

- A court in North Dakota has hit Greenpeace with hundreds of millions of dollars in liability after Energy Transfer, the owner of the Dakota Access Pipeline, managed to convince a jury likely composed of slackjawed Trump supporters that the organization was to blame for costs incurred as a result of the Standing Rock protests. This could destroy the organization, or at least its American branch. One thing that's not clear, though - one of the defendants is Greenpeace International, which is based in the EU - who enforces the ruling if that entity doesn't pay up?

- Nova Scotia's Minister of Opportunities and Social Development, Scott Armstrong, is coming under fire after it came out that he used $3,000 of public money to attend Donald Trump's inauguration. Armstrong justifies this by saying it was needed in order for him to advocate for jobs in the province.

- Ben and Jerry's, the famously progressive ice cream manufacturer, is suing its own parent company Unilever over alleged violations of the merger agreement which was supposed to leave the company's "social mission" intact. Apparently Unilever wanted Ben and Jerry's to stop criticizing Trump among other things, and is now removing its CEO without consulting the ice cream maker's board of directors.

- Istanbul University has annulled the degree of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, claiming irregularities in a program transfer he made when he was attending the institution in 1990. This comes just in time to make him ineligible to run for president (a university degree is a necessary qualification for the job in Turkey). Then, just to make sure he was out of the way, Turkish authorities arrested Imamoglu, accusing him of corruption and "links to terror groups". Imamoglu was considered the only credible opponent to incumbent president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is up for reelection shortly.

- Tesla has been removed from the upcoming Vancouver Auto Show. Organizers say that this is necessary to protect "the safety of attendees, exhibitors, and staff". Don't know about safety, but it probably is necessary if they want to avoid having the event disrupted by protesters. Meanwhile, people continue to target Tesla dealerships, most recently one in Montreal.

- A doctoral student in urban planning at Columbia University has had her student visa revoked and has fled the US for Canada. The US Department of Homeland Security has labelled her as a "terrorist sympathizer" and "supporter of Hamas", something she denies. But I guess studying urban planning, and thus potentially hurting the market for cars and petroleum, is pretty much the same thing to the Republicans.

News roundup, 19 March 2025

- A 19 year old Winnipeg man, who has previously been charged with spraypainting antisemitic graffiti on buildings, is now facing several terrorism-related charges; these include two counts of commission of an offence for a terrorist group (not clear if the offence in question was the graffiti or something else), as well as one count each of facilitating a terrorist activity and participating in an activity related to a terrorist group.

- Speaking of vandalism and terrorism, the Trump regime's Attorney General, Pam Bondi, has declared a recent outbreak of arson and other vandalism against Tesla vehicles and dealerships to be "nothing short of domestic terrorism". The thing is, the growing distaste for Elon Musk among thinking people around the world is actually starting to become a serious threat to Tesla. Auto insurers are planning to raise insurance rates for Tesla vehicles due to the high incidence of vandalism. Meanwhile a poll in Germany found that 94% of respondents would not consider buying a Tesla. And Tesla insiders are selling large amounts of stock. The latter point is particularly telling since insiders face strong constraints on how they trade shares in the company - they potentially would need to convince the SEC that they were trading on information available to anyone, not just insiders. So basically, the insiders are admitting that anyone can see that the stock is headed in the wrong direction. And now major investors in the company are starting to call for Musk's head. Be interesting to see what, if anything, the regime does in the event that Musk loses all his money.

- OpenAI is calling for a ban on Chinese AI products such as DeepSeek in the US. I could actually approve of that if they also banned American, European, and all other AI products, including OpenAI. That might be a very good idea, if you could somehow come up with an international treaty that the relevant countries could agree to. But since it's not going to happen, I'm not sure there's much point in banning one particular country's AIs. Sure, China's government is a nasty one, but that's largely irrelevant since they won't likely be in control of it either after a point. And it's hard not to notice that OpenAI themselves want to be exempted from all kinds of long-established copyright laws in order to compete with these Chinese products. It's not that they're libertarians - they want rules, they just don't want the rules to apply to them.

- The latest opinion polls put the federal Liberals in first place for the first time in a couple of years. The fact that the Conservative majority that seemed inevitable a couple of months ago may be slipping out of reach is definitely good news. Not such good news is the fact that the NDP has sunk so low that they will likely be largely irrelevant in the next parliament. It looks like either the Liberals will win a majority, or else they will win a plurality but need the support of the Bloc to form a government. That said, the NDP might not do quite as badly as the seat projection model predicts; such models usually look at the change in popular vote from the last election for a region of the country and adjust the vote in each riding in the region by that amount. So hopefully the prospect of the NDP losing all its Manitoba seats, as predicted by the model, won't come to pass.

- At the provincial level, of course, the NDP is doing much better in Manitoba. Shannon Corbett won an easy victory yesterday in the byelection forced by the death of Transcona MLA Nello Altomare.

- Donald Trump is claiming that pardons issued by Joe Biden in the dying days of his administration are null and void because the orders were signed using a device known as an autopen. The fact that a previous Republican administration had gotten approval for the use of an autopen to sign orders doesn't matter to the current regime, of course.

- A Republican member of Minnesota's state senate has been arrested on suspicion of soliciting an underage person for sex. Funny, I thought rightwingers were supposed to be all about protecting children...

News roundup, 18 March 2025

- The second set of remains found at the Prairie Green Landfill have been identified as having been Marcedes Myran, another victim of serial killer Jeremy Skibicki. In other news, a woman from Buffalo Point First Nation who was severely injured in a hit and run in Winnipeg last Friday believes that she was hit intentionally - she says a van followed her as she walked down Osborne Street, then as she crossed the street she made eye contact with the driver, only for the van to strike her, reverse over her, and drive over her again.

- A poll by Leger Marketing suggests that Canadians' sense of national pride is increasing overall - but has decreased by 10% in Alberta. There is also a slight (2%) decline in Atlantic Canada; whether this is statistical noise is hard to say, since the poll was conducted online and doesn't give a margin of error. The Alberta thing, though, is probably real (and would probably be much worse if you didn't include Calgary and Edmonton).

- The Canadian government is seriously reconsidering whether it's a good idea to buy any more F-35 fighters beyond the 16 we've already paid for, especially given that we'd be dependent on the (possibly hostile) US for maintenance and software upgrades. Defence Minister Bill Blair is suggesting that the remainder of the fleet could be made up of the Saab Gripen; as a bonus, Saab has promised that assembly and maintenance of the aircraft could be done in Canada under license, potentially bringing a lot of jobs.

- Canadians crossed the US border by car 23% less last month than they did the previous February. Air travel dropped as well, albeit by only 2.4%. I suspect if you don't count non-discretionary (e.g. job related) crossings, the drops would be considerably higher.

- In his most recent "state of the city" address, Winnipeg mayor Scott Gillingham mused about ending remote and hybrid work. CUPE Local 500 has filed a grievance on the matter; the local's president Gord Delbridge points out the fact that remote work has been beneficial for employee retention and has not significantly harmed productivity. Gillingham says that bringing workers back into the office will help downtown businesses; no doubt that is the real motivation here, especially since a decline in the value of commercial real estate will be bad for the city's revenue stream. Delbridge, however, questions the benefit to downtown businesses; he says some of his members are vowing to boycott downtown businesses if forced back into the office.

- The Canadian woman who was detained in an immigration facility in Arizona has been released and has returned home to BC. Most of her fellow inmates are not so fortunate; to her credit, she recognizes that.

- The metaphor of the "dumpster fire" has been used to describe a number of things, including Trump's first term. Now, in Brandon we finally have something worthy of comparison to Trump's second term - a whole landfill is burning.

News roundup, 17 March 2025

- Mark Carney was sworn in as Prime Minister of Canada on Friday. Sadly (but predictably) the first thing he did was to eliminate the consumer-level carbon tax. As I've said before, if it were up to me I'd have reduced the GST by an amount equivalent to the carbon tax, and if that still left some GST in place I'd have gotten rid of that too and increased the carbon tax to replace the revenue. Of course, that wouldn't help with rural alienation, but I'm not sure that anything is going to reach those people in the near future anyway.

- The Bureau of Reclamation, which among other things is responsible for managing dams on the Colorado River system, is facing staffing reductions of up to 40% as part of the regime's war on the public sector, and has been ordered to stop nearly all spending. Given that some of the bureau's spending is on things like maintenance for dams, and that the region is plagued by high demand for water as precipitation declines, this does not bode well.

- A court challenge to Ontario's anti-bike lane legislation has brought to light internal documents that suggest that the move will not make a meaningful impact on congestion, and will furthermore mean a 54% increase in the risk of collisions for all road users. Of course, if you're a populist like Doug Ford the truth isn't really what matters; what matters is what "the people" think. Hopefully the court will put the government in its place.

- Federal judges in the US that rule against the Trump regime are being threatened with violence; moreover, some Republican legislators are making moves to start impeachment proceedings against some of them. Combine that with the fact that Trump might simply ignore court orders, and the prospects of containing him through peaceful means do not look good.

- Europeans are torching Teslas to show their displeasure with Elon Musk. Some Americans are also taking various forms of direct action in this department, a matter that the regime wants investigated as "terrorism". Meanwhile the FBI is investigating a suspected arson attempt at the home of a Bayer executive.

News roundup, 14 March 2025

- An American Airlines Boeing 737 en route from Colorado Springs to Dallas made an emergency landing in Denver due to an engine issue, and then caught fire as it was taxiing to the terminal. The aircraft was successfully evacuated without any serious injuries, though.

- Donald Trump once again repeated his threats to annex Canada and Greenland, this time in front of NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. Rutte, who previously served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands, was notably quiet on the matter of a threat to conquer one NATO member in its entirety and steal a territory from another. Trump hasn't forgotten about the Panama Canal either; he's asked the military to develop "options" for the territory.

- The latest poll from Nanos puts the Conservatives at 36%, just one point ahead of the Liberals. The NDP is at 15%, which if nothing else is better than some early polls had them. The margin of error is 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, meaning that the two main parties are statistically tied. Notably, this poll was done before Carney took over as the Liberal leader. A poll from Leger a few days later, over a time period that includes the Liberal leadership election, has the two parties tied at 37% and the NDP down to 11%. The Leger poll also has a regional breakdown as well as a breakdown by age and gender; notably the Liberals are ahead in the 55+ age group but behind the Cons in younger age groups. I guess the silver lining to that is that boomers are more likely to vote; even then, though, it's a mixed bag, because the NDP does especially poorly in this group. So if the Liberals win there's a good chance it will be with a majority; while much better than a Conservative majority this would still be a disappointing result.

- South Korea sent a delegation to Ottawa to advocate for their country as a more reliable source of military hardware than the US. They're offering to sell advanced submarines with a 7,000 NM range; furthermore, they're prepared to set up maintenance facilities in this country and give Canada full access to the technologies behind the subs, which is more than the Americans are willing to do with some of their hardware.

- Empire Foods, the parent company of Sobeys, Canada Safeway, and Freshco, reports that sales of goods from the US are declining sharply as shoppers are increasingly unwilling to buy American stuff if they can avoid it.

- A Canadian entrepreneur was arrested by ICE while trying to reenter the US from Mexico in order to get a new visa, after her previous visa had been revoked. Because of the revocation of the first visa, she was told that she would have had to go to a US consulate outside of the country to reapply. The key phrase is "would have", because they weren't going to give her another chance - or even let her just leave and not return. She's currently being held in a private, for-profit prison in Arizona while they decide what to do with her. She describes the conditions as "inhumane", which is telling, because if they're treating a white person whose first language is English that way, it's probably worse for almost everyone else in the facility.

- A bill before Alberta's legislature to amend the province's Wildlife Act (which governs hunting) would, among other things, allow kids as young as 12 to use firearms without adult supervision. I can't see anything going wrong with this, no siree. The bill also allows "cervid hunt farms", where you'd be able to pay to shoot captive cervids (i.e. deer, including things like elk as well as whitetails or mule deer). They have that in some places in the US but it's worth noting that even the Alberta Wildlife Federation, which advocates for hunters in the province, thinks that allowing canned hunts is going too far.

News roundup, 13 March 2025

- Russian forces have recaptured most of the Kursk region seized by Ukraine last year as a bargaining chip. There are suggestions that the Trump regime's move to suspend intelligence sharing with Ukraine may have been a factor.

- Shelly Glover, who ran for the leadership of the Manitoba PCs in 2021, is looking at launching a new rightwing party on the assumption that the Tory brand is too badly tainted by the refusal to search the landfill. Glover says she cancelled her party membership after the party ran ads campaigning on said refusal. Whatever else one can conclude from this, it's certainly not going to hurt the NDP's prospects.

- A lobby group called the "Freedom Cities Coalition", backed by billionaire techbros, is calling on the Trump regime to create new special development zones where they could build corporate run cities that aren't bound by the usual rules governing municipalities. One of the stated reasons is so that they can develop new technologies without regulatory oversight. That does not sound like a good idea.

- US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says that Trump's proposed annexation of Canada will not be a topic of discussion at the upcoming G7 summit. It's kind of telling how he thinks it's entirely up to the US what will be discussed there, especially since they aren't even hosting the summit.

- Canadians continue to cancel vacation plans in the US in large numbers. Provincial tourism boards are hoping to capitalize on this by getting people to travel within the country. The boycott movement is also spreading to Europe, where both individuals and businesses are getting on board.

- Canadian intelligence agencies are taking the danger of US interference seriously. It's no great secret that the Americans have destabilized countries before, and the rise of social media has added a dangerous new dimension to this.

News roundup, 12 March 2025

- A Portuguese container ship, the Solong, collided with an anchored American tanker, the Stena Immaculate off the UK's east coast. The tanker was full of jet fuel, which ignited and caused a series of explosions, setting fire to both ships; to make matters worse, the freighter's cargo included sodium cyanide. Despite this, everyone except one crew member of the Solong has been rescued. Sadly the missing crew member was not the captain but some hapless low-level sailor; the captain is, however, facing manslaughter charges.

- The Trump regime is backing off on their plans to raise tariffs on aluminum and steel to 50% from the 25% already planned. In return, Ontario is suspending their planned 25% surcharge on electricity exports to the US. Hopefully that's not deterring the feds from keeping all options on the table, up to and including fees, restrictions, or a complete stoppage of oil exports if necessary. Although in the latter case I don't think the Americans would take it very well.

- The regime has abruptly withdrawn $400 million in federal funding from Columbia University, accusing the institution of being soft on antisemitism. They've also gotten ICE to arrest a Palestinian student at the university, Mahmoud Khalil, for his activism, but a court has blocked his deportation for the time being. They apparently arrested him claiming his student visa was cancelled, apparently not realizing that he had a green card.

- Former Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte has been arrested at the request of the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity allegedly committed in his zeal to arrest drug traffickers (or certain drug traffickers, or people accused of being drug traffickers, or...)

- BC's Liquor Distribution Branch has removed all American alcohol from its shelves (previously they had selectively removed products from red states). Premier David Eby, commenting on the situation, said "if the president so interested in Canadian water, then we're gonna help him out by letting him keep his watery beer".

- Ukraine has agreed to a 30 day ceasefire negotiated by the US; in turn, the US will resume military aid and intelligence sharing. The ceasefire is, however, subject to Russian approval.

- Amazon is actually complying with the Manitoba government's request that it follow the law on the sale of machetes in the province. 

- US Customs has seen a 36% increase in the smuggling of eggs at the Windsor-Detroit border crossing since October, and a 158% increase at the Tijuana-San Diego crossing. The customs service has made 3,768 seizures of eggs and poultry at its crossings in that time, compared to 352 fentanyl seizures.

- An automated assistant for moderators at Reddit is flagging posts containing the name "Luigi" as potentially violent content thanks to the Luigi Mangione case.

News roundup, 11 March 2025

- Various fake images of Mark Carney with such despicable people as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are being circulated on social media. The images show signs of having been generated with AI.

- Donald Trump apparently has his eyes on the Columbia River Treaty, which regulates the flow of the eponymous river for hydroelectricity and flood prevention. Trump apparently listed the treaty among his grievances against Canada in discussions with Trudeau.

- While interim Manitoba PC leader Wayne Ewasko has belatedly apologized for his party's stance on the landfill search in the last provincial election, leadership candidate Obby Khan isn't so sure; while he eventually came around to supporting the apology (presumably after sniffing the wind) he is not prepared to say that the Stefanson government made a mistake in its decision not to conduct a search at the time. For his part, the other leadership candidate, Wally Daudrich, is now saying that he's in favour of a search but that he thinks it should be paid for by private sector donations (like that's ever going to happen).

- X (the former Twitter) was hit with a massive distributed denial of service attack that shut down the platform several times on Monday. Musk has hinted that it might be a country who's responsible due to the scale of the attack, however a hacker organization called Dark Storm Team is claiming responsibility for the outage.

- A&W Canada, which has long been independent of its American former parent company, may be reaping the benefits of Canadians' rage against the US. The fact that the food is considerably better than McDonalds fare is a bonus.

News roundup, 10 March 2025

- Mark Carney has won the leadership of the federal Liberals in a landslide, and will be sworn in as prime minister shortly. He will become the first person to hold the office of prime minister while not yet having a seat in the House of Commons.

- The Hudson Bay Company has filed for creditor protection. The company intends to restructure; they cite the trade issues with the US as one of the problems, but another one cited is "post-pandemic declines in downtown store traffic". This seems questionable, though; these days most of their stores aren't in downtown locations. The downtown store in Winnipeg closed early in the pandemic (and the writing had been on the wall well before); all remaining locations in the city are in suburban malls.

- Human remains found in the Prairie Green Landfill in Rosser, Manitoba have been identified as having been Morgan Harris, one of four women killed by a Winnipeg serial killer. Moreover, there appear to be remains from another, as yet unidentified person. That person could be Marcedes Myran, or the woman known provisionally as Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe (Buffalo Woman). Or it could be someone else entirely; time will tell.

- Mere hours after declaring another pause in the tariffs on Canada, Trump is now threatening new ones on lumber and dairy products. For her part, Trump's press secretary Karoline Leavitt openly declared that if Canada wants to avoid tariffs, it should accept American rule. And four different anonymous sources, apparently with insider knowledge of the recent discussions between Trump and Trudeau, report that Trump does not accept the legitimacy of the 1908 treaty that settles the boundary between Canada and the US. Trump also wants to eject Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence sharing agreement, presumably so that the US can spy on Canada with impunity, but other members of the agreement now want to limit what they share with the US. So do Saudi Arabia and Israel - and if those two countries don't fully trust the US with their intelligence secrets, I doubt anyone else will either.

- Trump is blaming "globalists" for the decline in stock markets in response to his erratic tariff behaviour. Of course that term tends to be a bit of a dog whistle among his ilk, kind of like "rootless cosmopolitans" was for an earlier generation.

- Investigators into the death of Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, have concluded that Arakawa died of hantavirus, a disease carried by deer mice. Hackman, who was in an advanced state of dementia, may not even have realized that she was dead, much less been able to seek help, but lingered on for another week or so before dying of heart failure.

- A Florida man has been arrested after making multiple calls to 911 to ask them for assistance in assassinating Donald Trump. He also claimed to have hacked into a missile system that would enable him to destroy New York City, and that the missiles were "attracted" to Trump Tower. He reportedly has a history of mental health issues.

News roundup, 7 March 2025

- The Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the main agency responsible for cyberintelligence in Canada, is warning that some foreign powers (China, Russia, and Iran are specifically named) will "very likely" use artificial intelligence to try to influence the outcome of the impending federal election. No doubt this is a real risk, but it's kind of odd that they omit the United States from that list; if anything Trump has a much more direct interest in the outcome of the election than Putin, Xi, or Khamenei do. I guess they still find it too weird to say that, but they'd better get over it and start planning for it.

- Trump is once again pausing some of the tariffs imposed on Canada for another month. In response, the feds are deferring their second round of retaliatory tariffs, though the previous ones will remain in place for the time being. Manitoba premier Wab Kinew is not falling for it; the ban on US liquor in provincial liquor stores will remain in place, and Manitoba Hydro will be reviewing export contracts. Ontario's Doug Ford isn't falling for it either; he's slapping a 25% export duty on electricity from the province. BC's David Eby is slapping a toll on American commercial vehicles using the Alaska Highway. And Ottawa and the provinces have agreed to the free flow of alcohol between provinces.

- The CEO of Brown-Forman, maker of Jack Daniels, is quite indignant at Canadian provinces pulling his product from the shelves. He calls the move "worse than a tariff".

- Cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are worrying to Canadian weather and flood forecasters, who say this will impact their ability to predict dangerous situations.

- Denmark's division of PostNord (the postal service that country shares with Sweden) is completely eliminating traditional letter mail as of the end of this year, and will focus solely on parcel delivery. Pelle Dragsted, an MP with the leftwing Red-Green Alliance party, blames the introduction of competition from private companies for the decline in letter mail. This is at least partly correct, since private companies aren't bound by existing collective agreements and can thus pay their workers less. Of course, some of it is just cultural - Denmark is one of the most digitized countries in the world according to the article. Hardly anybody uses cash, and people have smartphone apps that serve as health cards and drivers' licenses. Even if the postal service didn't have to compete with the private sector, they'd still be having to compete with the digital world.

- Beckham Severight, the teen convicted of dangerous driving in the death of cyclist Rob Jenner, has been sentenced to three years in prison; this includes time served.

- Butterfly populations across the US have declined by 22% overall between 2000 and 2020. Some species had declined by as much as 50%; most worrisome though is the fact that there is no obvious pattern to the declines, though habitat loss, climate change, and pesticides are all suspected of being factors.

- The US Department of Defense is purging its websites of thousands of images that could be associated with anything that might offend the regime. Among the photos considered for removal is an image of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Whether the image is being removed for reminding the public that the US was the first and only country to use nuclear weapons in warfare, or for containing the word "gay", is not known.

News roundup, 6 March 2025

- The Trump regime is deferring some of its tariffs, specifically those on Big Three automakers, for another month. Whether this is a result of Trump seeing the impact of tariffs on share prices, or if it's just another move meant to confuse us isn't clear.

- The regime has stayed its decision to fire nearly 6,000 employees of the US Department of Agriculture, following an order from Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) to reinstate the employees pending an investigation of the legality of the layoffs. Of course, knowing who we're dealing with, this might just mean the regime has to dissolve the MSPB before they re-fire them.

- The US has stopped sharing intelligence on Russia with Ukraine. Whether they are sharing intelligence on Ukraine with Russia is another question, of course.

- A Canadian teenager who was backpacking through Europe was recruited by the FSB after volunteering with what he initially thought was a humanitarian organization in Donetsk; he then went to Poland so he could make contact with the Polish military. He was caught after getting drunk and spilling the beans to hotel staff in Warsaw, and has now received a 20 month sentence.

- Manitoba's interim opposition leader, Wayne Ewasko, has belatedly apologized on behalf of the entire Progressive Conservative party for their stance in opposition to searching the Prairie Green Landfill for the remains of murdered indigenous women. The fact that human remains now appear to have been found probably meant that the party's previous position was even less tenable than it was when they were defeated in the election in which they campaigned on that.

- Winnipeg mayor Scott Gillingham has rejected a recommendation from city administrators that the upgrade of the North End Sewage Treatment Plant be financed by hiking water and sewer rates. The upgrade definitely is needed; Gillingham favours a more modest increase to keep the work moving along while trying to find another source of revenue.

- The Canadian Food Inspection Agency reports an increase in the number of complaints about inaccurate or misleading country of origin labels in grocery stores.

- Two people have been arrested after driving their cars into a picket line at the Region of Waterloo International Airport. Nobody was seriously hurt.

News roundup, 5 March 2025

- The Trump regime, as expected, has imposed its threatened 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico; counter-tariffs are being imposed on some US exports. Justin Trudeau has stated something that many of us would consider at least plausible, namely the fact that Trump's tariffs are intended to soften Canada up for annexation. What's noteworthy is that in his standing up to the Americans now, Trudeau is showing more political courage than he has at any previous time in his career, much as Jean Chrétien declined to join the US and UK in their ill-conceived (not to mention criminal) adventure in Iraq only after he had announced that he would be retiring prior to the next election. That's the Liberal Party of Canada way, I think. But hey, we'll take it.

- Several provinces are already taking retaliatory action. Manitoba's Wab Kinew is focusing on "non-tariff countermeasures", including the removal of American alcohol from shelves as well as giving businesses the option to defer their payroll and sales tax. Ontario's Doug Ford has cancelled an agreement with Elon Musk's Starlink and banning US companies from procurement contracts; Ford is also exploring export levies on electricity and critical minerals. BC's David Eby is selectively pulling "red state" liquors, so you'll be able to buy California and Washington wine, but not Jack Daniels or Jim Beam. Nova Scotia's Tim Houston is not only pulling American booze but doubling tolls for US-registered commercial vehicles passing through the Cobequid Pass. Even Danielle Smith, one of only two premiers certifiably worse than Doug Ford, is now saying she "fully supports" the federal government's response and will be discussing her own government's response with her cabinet shortly.

- Tom Brodbeck is unimpressed with the level of resistance to Trump's policies in the US. Some say that this is actually a failure of the media to cover protests rather than an actual lack of protests; there are some photos of what look like big protests in this Reddit thread but I'm not sure how representative they are or even if they're being posted in accurate context.

- US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says that Trump is willing to meet Canada and Mexico "in the middle". Does that mean we'll have to settle for 12.5% tariffs? Or does it mean that Trump is getting spooked by crashing stock markets? Stay tuned I guess.

- Despite how Trump treated him the other day, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not abandoning hope that Trump will come to his senses. Then again, the sad truth of the matter is that Trump and Putin hold all the cards. I suspect Ukraine will be forced to make major territorial concessions, unless Europe can somehow make up for the fact that the US has suspended all military aid to the country.

- The UK government is considering several possible alternatives to prison, including banning offenders from pubs and sporting events. I guess for many of the typical offenders such a punishment might be so devastating that it might make them think twice about reoffending?

News roundup, 4 March 2025

- The 25% tariffs on nearly all imports from Canada and Mexico ware going ahead. Canada, along with China who are being hit with 20% tariffs, are imposing a number of retaliatory measures in response; stock markets on both sides of the border have taken a beating. Doug Ford is vowing to cut off electricity exports to the US if this goes ahead. Perhaps an even more effective measure would be a potash embargo - they can find other sources of electricity a lot more easily than potash. Some also think that American fast food franchises could be replaced by Canadian ones; whether patriotism is enough to overcome marketing in the case of things like McDonalds or KFC remains to be seen, though.

- Following remarks by Volodymyr Zelenskyy that an agreement to end the war is "very far away", Trump has announced that he is pausing all military aid to Ukraine until Zelenskyy is able to satisfy him that Kyiv is "committed to good faith negotiations for peace". This will apparently be assessed entirely on Trump's subjective perceptions, just like every other judgment he makes.

- Trump has issued an executive order expanding logging on federal lands, and wants to use emergency powers to get around the habitat protection provisions of the Endangered Species Act.

- There was apparently a conspicuous lack of political expression at the Oscars over the weekend. Given that in the past people like Michael Moore often weren't shy about what they said while accepting their awards, it's kind of strange, if this report is accurate. And unsettling - it's a sign of how scared they are.

- WWE co-founder Linda McMahon has been appointed Secretary of Education by the Trump administration. They don't leave a whole lot left for the satirists to do, do they?

News roundup, 3 March 2025

- Volodymyr Zelenskyy attempted to talk some sense into Donald Trump and JD Vance in a meeting at the White House on Friday. It did not go well; Trump and Vance spent the whole time berating Zelenskyy and trying to get him to grovel, and then kicked him out of the meeting without an agreement when he didn't. Europeans were appalled; Italy is calling for an immediate summit between the EU and the US, though it's doubtful that this will change anything. The Globe and Mail's Andrew Coyne has made no bones about the scale of the disaster we are seeing; he warns that we have always underestimated just how far Trump will go, and that we're going to have to learn fast. Now it's worth noting that Coyne is a liberal (his cousin Deborah Coyne ran for the Liberal Party leadership in 2013), and a centrist or centre-right liberal at that. So he naturally sees the potential collapse of the American hegemony as an unmitigated disaster. From a more leftwing perspective, it's a bit less clear. Some hope that this could lead to a more multipolar world, where instead of a single hegemon you have a number of major powers (perhaps the US, EU, China, Russia, and India) balanced against each other. That is indeed possible, and it could lead to a good outcome in the long run. On the other hand, another possibility (probably more likely) is the US and Russia both become sufficiently weak due to their own failings that China simply becomes the new hegemon - and while the Americans have been far from benevolent overlords in much of the world I don't share the confidence of some leftists that the Chinese would be better. A third possibility that no new stable equilibrium can form and the world degenerates into chaos and, eventually, nuclear war; a fourth is something not unlike the scenario created decades ago by science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle, in which the US and Russia (the USSR in the novels) form a political union called the "CoDominium" to maintain stability, which they do but at immense social cost. Given the friendly relations between Trump and Putin, and the fact that they seem to need each other, this last scenario actually starts to look sort of plausible.

- Jagmeet Singh is calling for Donald Trump to be "uninvited" from the G7 summit that Canada is hosting in Kananaskis, Alberta in June, and for the meeting to be refocused on building a "common front" against Trump's America. This seems to be a bridge too far for the federal government; energy minister Jonathan Wilkinson was particularly dismissive, calling on Singh to "find new advisers who could provide him with more thoughtful positions". See my comments above about liberals being unable to imagine an alternative to the existing world order; it seems that in Wilkinson's mind the only possible course of action is to continue doing CPR on the old order until rigor mortis sets in.

- A "guidance document" from the US Centers for Disease Control prohibits scientists employed by the agency from co-authoring papers with anyone employed by the World Health Organization. It further orders that employees who have co-authored papers with WHO employees that were submitted before the Trump regime took power must withdraw them, or remove their names from the papers prior to publication. Because "international" is a four-letter word to the MAGA crowd, after all.

- Tesla's sales in Europe have dropped by 45% since last year, even as EV sales overall increased by 37% over the same period. The company's stock has dropped by 23% since the start of the year.

- One of the many downsides of firing huge numbers of civil servants is that you end up with a lot of disgruntled people, who may become recruitment targets for foreign intelligence.

- Kash Patel, Trump's new FBI director, wants the agency to establish a formal relationship with the Ultimate Fighting Championship. I guess he figures submission holds could be a useful technique for interrogating prisoners.

New roundup, 28 Feb 2025

- Doug Ford's "Progressive" Conservative Party has won its third straight majority, projected to win 80 seats (from 79 at time of dissolution) in the 124 seat legislature. The NDP holds onto Official Opposition status with 27 seats (previously 28). The Liberals are projected to regain official party status with 14 seats (from 9), but their leader Bonnie Crombie was defeated in her own constituency of Mississauga East–Cooksville. The Greens reelected their 2 MPPs, while only one of the six independent members in the old legislature, Haldimand-Norfolk MPP Bobbi Ann Brady, was reelected. Full results, including an interactive map, can be found here. One statement in the CBC article stands out as a bit weird though:

When Ford triggered the $189-million election he asked Ontario voters give him "the largest mandate in Ontario's history" to combat continued economic threats from U.S. President Donald Trump.

On that front, it may prove a bittersweet night for Ford and his PCs, who are likely to return to Queen's Park with roughly the same number of seats after a campaign his rivals called a cynical and unnecessary power play.

I guess it's "bittersweet" in that he didn't win every seat in the legislature (which Frank McKenna actually did in New Brunswick in 1987) but for a government on its third time around, who have presided over the province becoming, by some measures, the worst province in the entire country to live in, the only way it could possibly be bittersweet for Doug and co. is because of the hangovers they'll have this morning for all the cheap American wine and bourbon they drank in celebration.

 - Donald Trump insists that the 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico will go ahead as planned, claiming that drugs are still "pouring" across the borders. Or maybe not. We'll know in a few days I guess. One note from the second article, though:

When asked if the Canadian government is doing enough to meet Trump's bar, Klobuchar, a Democrat, said she can't predict everything Trump is going to do, "but what I can say is that it's enough to meet my bar."

I can't say I find that particularly reassuring. Then again, Trump is so unpredictable that maybe he will let us off the hook - or defer it for another month. The thing about Trump and those influencing him is that, while they're nowhere near as smart as they think they are, they're smarter than they look - and far more cunning. I think Trump and Musk got where they are now largely by throwing their opponents off balance with chaos, and they'll keep doing so as long as it continues to work for them, probably longer.

- Manitoba has become the first province to sign onto the national pharmacare program. The province will receive $219 million over four years to cover diabetes medication, contraceptives, and certain other products. Contraceptives are already covered by the province but many more will benefit from this - assuming the Cons don't win the federal election and claw back the money.

- In Thailand, over 40 Uyghurs who had been detained for a decade after fleeing China have been deported back to Xi Jinping's welcoming arms. Of cousre it couldn't be Thailand caving to Chinese pressure, could it?

- Speaking of caving to a more powerful overlord, UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer seems to share Tony Blair's fear of doing anything, anything, to offend the United States, no matter who is in charge in that country. Starmer refused to answer questions about Trump's proposed annexation of Canada on a visit to Washington on Thursday, accusing the reporter of "trying to find a divide between us that doesn’t exist". And Romanian authorities have permitted Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan to leave Romania as they await their trials for rape and sex trafficking. There had been reports of pressure from the Trump regime to allow this, though of course the Romanians are denying that this had anything to do with their decision.