News roundup, 7 May 2025

- India launched missiles into the Pakistani-controlled part of Kashmir, killing a child and injuring two other people in a major escalation of tensions following terrorist attacks in the Indian-controlled part of the territory last month. Pakistan claims to have shot down two Indian aircraft in retaliation.

- Mark Carney met with Donald Trump yesterday as planned. Carney was diplomatic in discussing how the talks went; he did say they were "wide ranging" and "constructive", and said that the two leaders had "agreed to disagree" on whether Canada should join the US.

- Trump is considering imposing a 100% tariff on all foreign-produced films; exactly what would count as "foreign" for these purposes is a work in progress - the status of co-productions is uncertain. This could, however, be extremely damaging to the Canadian film industry. Myself, I'd be all in favour of slapping hefty reciprocal tariffs on American films if this were to occur - though that might be a hard sell for the masses if it meant that they didn't get to see the latest Marvel superhero flick.

- The Conservatives have chosen Regina-Qu'Appelle MP (and former leader) Andrew Scheer as their interim leader in Parliament until Pierre Poilievre can get elected in the coming byelection in Battle River-Crowfoot. Whether this will spur a new burst in sales of Queen's third album in Canada remains to be seen.

- Friedrich Merz has been elected chancellor of Germany following a second vote in the Bundestag. It's not clear who changed their votes the second time around, as this election is conducted by secret ballot. The resolution of this crisis has not silenced AfD leader Alice Weidel, who is calling for a new election.

- The municipality of Oak Bay, a suburb of Victoria, has passed a bylaw limiting noise from heat pumps - and only heat pumps (not regular air conditioners, for instance). They are limited to 50 dB, and 45 dB at night; for comparison, an average conversation is 60 dB. This apparently follows a complaint from a NIMBY named Thorsten Hanisch; I haven't been able to locate any social media from the guy, but I'd wager donuts to dollars that if it were unlocked we'd see a lot of pictures of big trucks on his page - trucks that make a heck of a lot more noise than any heat pump.

- Punk band Propagandhi has announced that they are cancelling all US dates of their upcoming tour due to "circumstances beyond our control". I assume this means either they were denied visas, or else a not unreasonable fear that they could end up in El Salvador. 

- A woman in Rochester, Minnesota who was caught on video screaming racial slurs at an autistic five year old child claims to have been doxxed online and that she needs help to relocate somewhere in the hope of avoiding the consequences of her behaviour. She has gone to GiveSendGo (basically GoFundMe for deplorables) to finance her relocation; so far she's raised over $700,000.

News roundup, 17 Feb 2024

 - The Trump regime has a proposal for Ukraine. Essentially the proposal is, "you give us a 50% interest in all of your rare earth deposits, and we'll politely ask Putin not to take any more of your territory than he already has". Not surprisingly, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is less than impressed with the idea.

- JD Vance has met with AfD leader Alice Wiedel, and is condemning the "firewall", that unwritten rule that German mainstream parties will not form coalitions with extremist parties such as Wiedel's.

- WestJet is reporting a 25% drop in inquiries about tickets to US destinations since Trump's aggressive moves against Canada, and a duty-free store on the BC-Washington border has lost 80% of their business since the tariffs were imposed. And not only are individual Canadians thinking twice about US spending, municipalities are as well - for instance, the City of Surrey has cancelled a $740,000 contract for American-made bleachers.

- Elon Musk's close ties to the regime are seriously impacting Tesla sales in many places, as people increasingly don't want to be associated with Musk. There has also been a rash of vandalism at Tesla stores; unusually for cases of vandalism, the FBI is getting involved.

- Aisha Ahmad, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, has studied insurgencies for many years. She thinks (no doubt rightly) that an attempt by the US to militarily invade Canada would be catastrophic for both countries:

 Even if one per cent of all resisting Canadians engaged in armed insurrection, that would constitute a 400,000-person insurgency, nearly 10 times the size of Taliban at the start of the Afghan war. If a fraction of that number engaged in violent attacks, it would set fire to the entire continent.

While the prospect of a military invasion still seems far off, it's worth noting that many didn't think Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine was very likely either. Gwynne Dyer thought, in February 2022, that the idea that Russia would actually invade Ukraine was preposterous, because it would be harmful to Russia's interests. And if you consider the fact that the people pulling Trump's strings may not actually care about the well-being of the US anyway...

News roundup, 10 Jan 2024

- Economic losses from the fires in the Los Angeles area are now estimated to be at least $135 billion. Thousands of buildings, including celebrities' homes, have been destroyed; at least five people have died.

- Justin Trudeau now calls abandoning electoral reform his "biggest regret". And indeed, it was one of the more regrettable aspects of his tenure; too bad he's only acknowledging this now when there's no time to do anything about it. Of course, up until recently he didn't have to worry about his party being pushed into third place; coincidentally, the Liberals had fewer seats than the NDP at the time they promised electoral reform in the first place. And it turns out that his decision to abandon electoral reform came not long after a committee recommended some form of proportional system, rather than the instant-runoff system preferred by the Liberals. Meanwhile the party plans to have Trudeau's replacement selected by March 9, giving the winner 15 days before Parliament reconvenes (and probably votes non-confidence in the government).

- Elon Musk has heaped praise on Pierre Poilievre. This should come as no surprise to anyone, of course, except maybe those who hoped that he would be too busy heaping praise on the likes of Alice Weidel of Germany's AfD to remember who Poilievre is. I guess it's possible that stuff like this might harm the Tories somewhat after a while, but it's unlikely to hurt them sufficiently to stop them from winning a pretty solid majority.

- While most have until now dismissed Donald Trump's musings about annexing Canada to be a joke, some federal cabinet ministers, including Finance Minister Domenic LeBlanc, aren't so sure anymore now that Trump has repeatedly declared the intent to "use economic force" to compel Canada to join. One thing that's kinda, sorta reassuring is that he says he wouldn't use military force against Canada, even if he won't rule out using it against Denmark or Panama if they won't hand over the territories he wants to take from them. Perhaps he's seeing from his buddy Vlad's experience that invading and taking over your next door neighbour isn't as easy as it might look on paper. Or, more likely, Musk and Vance are seeing it and talking him down; I'm not sure Trump has the mental capacity to figure that out on his own, even with the evidence right in front of him.

- At a sentencing hearing for the Coutts border blockade trial, the prosecutor has called for prison time for two men convicted of mischief over $5,000 as a result of their actions during the protest. They're still likely to get off pretty lightly compared with two others who each got 6½ years each for weapons charges related to the same protest.

- Frances Haughen, the whistleblower who reported a few years ago about how Meta knew that their products were harming children and teens and damaging democracy, thinks it's no surprise that Meta is now doing away with fact checking in jurisdictions where they can get away with doing so. She believes that the company has "heard the message" from Trump; perhaps Zuckerberg isn't keen on the idea of falling out of a window.