News roundup, 31 May 2024

- Donald Trump has been convicted on all 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. He responded pretty much as you'd expect Donald Trump to respond. Despite the fact that these are felony convictions, the chance of an actual custodial sentence may not be that high.

- A recent poll has revealed that Joe Biden has serious problems appealing to younger voters. Among voters under 45, he leads Trump by only 4 points, although the lead among millennials and Gen Z specifically is a bit higher, at 6 points. What's really worrisome, though, is that if you include RFK Jr., Jill Stein, and Cornel West in the polling, Trump is 6 points ahead with Gen Z/Millennials and 8 with the under 45s overall.

- Justin Trudeau says that he wants to make housing more affordable for younger folks... while not bringing down values for existing homeowners. This is of course probably not possible, and it illustrates a serious problem that  nearly all governments face in tackling the housing crisis. Because if you drive down property values, you make older folks (aka the people most likely to vote) feel less well off. Another problem, not mentioned in the article, is that if you drive down housing prices you weaken the main source of revenue for municipalities and, in some provinces, school boards.

- An investigation by the Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call has found that Israel's intelligence agencies have been spying on the International Criminal Court for a decade. They are also not above intimidation evidently; following Palestine joining the court in 2015, two men showed up at the home of ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and handed her an envelope with cash and an Israeli phone number, and people familiar with the case suspect that the real reason was to make it clear to her that they knew where she lived. They also hacked her email. Some legal experts recommend that these actions be investigated as "offences against the administration of justice".

- Following yet another instance of shots being fired at a Jewish school, this one in Toronto, Doug Ford was quick to suggest, without evidence, that immigrants were to blame.

- A bill to recognize Two-Spirit and Transgender Day of Visibility was passed in the Manitoba legislature. What's interesting is that most of the Tory opposition voted with the NDP government to pass the bill, though four of them voted against it - Kelvin Goertzen (Steinbach), Josh Guenter (Borderland), Konrad Narth (La Verendrie), and Ron Schuler (Springfield-Ritchot).

- A city councillor in Whitehorse introduced a motion calling on the mayor to write a letter on behalf of the city to the prime minister and the foreign affairs minister calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. The motion was ruled out of order due to it being outside the city's jurisdiction.

- A Winnipeg bakery that has experienced several robberies, most recently one in which someone pushed her way behind the counter, scaring off the staff, and took the cash from the till, has decided to go cashless. Under the circumstances I can't blame them, but if this becomes a trend, especially with services more essential than a rather niche bakery, it will be very bad for people who can't open a bank account (say, because they don't have a fixed address).

News roundup, 30 May 2024

- Israel's national security advisor says that he expects the war to continue for another seven months. Given how bad things are already in Gaza, you have to wonder how he expects them to resist that long. Maybe he figures that's what's needed to get everyone to leave.

- A Jewish school in Montreal has been hit by gunfire. Nobody was hurt, but no suspects have been found so far, and it's not the first time in the last few months that something like this has happened.

- Matthew Bzura, the president of the Professional Association of Residents and Interns of Manitoba, has lodged a complaint against Dr. Gem Newman, the medical graduate who dared to talk about Gaza in his valedictory address. Bzura alleges various policies related to professional behaviour and social media use were violated with the speech. Meanwhile businesses whose owners dared to share the video of Dr. Newman's speech have ended up on a list of "Jew-hating businesses" that is circulating on social media.

- Following the forceful removal of protesters from the University of Calgary earlier this month, Calgary police are denying that their body armour, shields, helmets, and flashbangs constitute "riot gear". If that's the case, I wonder what they'd use for an actual riot.

- A man who was ticketed after attending a People's Party of Canada rally in violation of COVID-19 restrictions has lost his bid to have the ticket thrown out. He has, however, been given a year to pay the fine.

- A couple of years ago the Alberta government began converting some beds at a long-term care home for use by psychiatric patients with "complex needs". This has not been good for the safety or comfort of the seniors already living there; violence and "shelter in place" orders are not the sort of thing most of us imagine would be a good way to spend our twilight years.

- A priest in Orlando, Florida may face criminal charges after allegedly biting a woman during an altercation over Holy Communion at a Sunday mass.

- A man in Michigan who had been charged with driving with a suspended license joined a virtual court hearing on Zoom... while driving. I do hope he doesn't get his license back any time soon; apart from whatever he may have done to lose it in the first place, he's clearly too stupid to allow on the road.

News roundup, 29 May 2024

- The World Health Organization is warning that the assault on Rafah in Gaza could shut down the city's last functioning hospital, potentially leading to a lot more deaths. The Israelis seem not to care.

- A student is suing the Ontario College of Art & Design University for failing to protect her from antisemitism on campus. The student, Samantha Kline, says that she has been subject to death threats. One thing to note is that she explicitly identifies as a Zionist; nonetheless, it's hard to justify that kind of behaviour.

- Speaking of Zionism, there's a rather interesting post in a Reddit thread where someone breaks it down quite nicely:

1. For some people, ‘Zionism’ means “Israel has a right to exist”.
2. For others, ‘Zionism’ means “Israel has a right to expand to encompass whichever territories in the middle-east it desires, regardless of who is living there currently.”
And,
3. For some people ‘Anti-Zionism’ means “Israel doesn’t have a right to expand indefinitely, and should negotiate a permanent two-state solution, ensuring the human rights of Palestinians in the process.”
4. And then, some people believe ‘Anti-Zionism’ means “I want to eliminate the state of Israel and its people”. 

So it's quite possible to be a Zionist by definition 1, but an anti-Zionist by definition 3. It's stuff like this that makes communicating across the divide even more difficult than it already is; perhaps it's best to be cautious about even using that word in the course of such discussions.

- Harassment of MPs, and actual threats towards them, has increased enormously in the last 5 years. The sergeant at arms at Parliament says in 2019, there were a total of eight files opened by his office regarding threats against MPs; in 2023 there were 530. I think it's a safe bet that the pandemic has been the main factor; tough and unpopular decisions had to be made, and people became isolated and filled the void with social media, making them more susceptible to manipulative conspiracy theories. Unfortunately I don't see things improving much  anytime soon, especially since a lot more tough decisions will be needed to deal with what's coming in the next few decades.

- The Kinew government is planning to tighten up rent controls. They are also providing a ten year exemption for owners of nonresidential buildings who convert them to residential, so as to provide an incentive to do this.

- In Ontario, the government is paying $225 million to the Beer Store consortium so as to be able to end their quasi-monopoly 16 months before the expiration of a 10-year agreement signed by the previous government, and thus get that beer into convenience stores. Some have wondered why they didn't just wait for the agreement to expire; Robyn Urback suggests that they plan to call an early election, and are hoping that easier access to beer will help their chances.

- The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has approved the release of two moth species for the biological control of invasive plants. The targets are reeds in the genus Phragmites, which were introduced from Eurasia in the 19th century and have been taking over wetlands across North America. Part of the problem with these plants is that, as with some other plants like Garlic Mustard, they release chemicals into the environment that keep seedlings of other plant species from successfully developing. The larvae of the moths are very specific in their foodplant requirements and thus hopefully will not become a problem themselves.

- A Winnipeg convenience store was destroyed by fire on Friday night. No cause has been announced yet, however one witness reported that the fire seemed to start at the front of the building. Certainly there have been a number of arson attacks on convenience stores in the city in recent years; some folks on Reddit are speculating that turf wars in the contraband cigarette business are to blame.

- The City of Toronto has renamed a football stadium after the late former mayor (and brother of the current Ontario premier) Rob Ford. Perhaps, in the tradition of giving stadiums nicknames, this one could be called "The Pipe".

News roundup, 28 May 2024

- The IDF bombed a refugee camp in Rafah, killing at least 45 people. They then followed it up by hitting the city's hospitals. The camp was not in one of the places where civilians had been ordered to evacuate, and was full of people who had been forced out of other parts of Gaza. One has to say that when you herd people into a small part of their homeland, and then bomb that area, the optics are very bad.

- The US House of Representatives committee on energy and commerce has requested a briefing from their National Intelligence Director Avril Haines regarding the firing of two Chinese-born scientists from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.

- Parks Canada is sticking to their guns regarding the recreational watercraft ban at Clear Lake in the hope of nipping an outbreak of zebra mussels in the bud. I have to respectfully disagree with the provincial government here; while a unilateral decision might seem heavy handed, you need to be heavy handed when dealing with something like this if you want any chance of stopping the spread. I do agree that measures should be taken to help businesses harmed by the decision, though.

- A Canadian senator has introduced a bill, known as the Climate-Aligned Finance Act, which would force financial institutions as well as pension funds to move their investments out of emissions-intensive sectors of the economy. In addition it would require lending to fossil fuel companies to be treated as higher risk. The bill is not expected to pass; nonetheless, the mere fact that it's being discussed is sending the likes of the Canadian Bankers' Association into conniptions. Now what did Ken Livingstone say about bankers again?

- The troubles at the Food Fare on Portage Avenue seem to be escalating, as cars belonging to the store's co-owner and a relative were torched in the store parking lot. The people seen lighting the fire in the surveillance video had apparently been kicked out of the store for shoplifting the previous day.

- The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT), the provincial police watchdog, recommended that three Lethbridge police officers involved in spying on an NDP MLA should face criminal charges, however provincial prosecutors have declined to take up the case.

- A company run by former Tory cabinet minister Kevin Klein is buying three newspapers, including the Winnipeg Sun, from Postmedia.

- The Beautiful Plains School Division in southwestern Manitoba is suing a Carberry woman for defamation after the woman made multiple allegations on social media about teachers at the schools her children attend.

- Upon seeing a distraught man walking along Highway 407 in Brampton, two drivers for Purolator put on their four-ways and drove slowly behind him to keep him from getting run over. Hopefully he'll eventually be thankful rather than angry that they foiled his apparent suicide attempt. 

News roundup, 27 May 2024

- The University of Toronto is warning faculty and staff participating in the pro-Palestinian encampment on campus that they may face dismissal if they do not leave the encampment by Monday morning, the deadline given for the camp to be removed. Meanwhile in Germany, protesters at the Free University of Berlin have faced an aggressive crackdown from the police.

- Donald Trump is doing dangerously well in the polls in several key swing states. Clearly something needs to be done about this, and fast. Bill McKibben thinks Biden and the Democrats need to pull out all the stops to make climate change the key issue. Seems reasonable to me; if nothing else it offers something on which the two major parties fundamentally differ, compared to things like the Israel-Palestine conflict where they're too similar to motivate many younger voters. Plus nature keeps sending Americans reminders that this really is an important issue; some of them might even listen under the right circumstances. And with such a high stakes election, Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock are proposing that Canada take the lead in sending election observers to the US this fall. Not a bad idea to be sure.

- Members of the German environmental group Letzte Generation have been charged with "forming a criminal organization", a move some fear could criminalize even public declarations of support for the group.

- A startup in the UAE claims that they will be able to use vertical farming techniques to grow several crops not generally amenable to this, including not only hydroponic standards like greens and tomatoes but also things like wheat, rice, and potatoes. Many are skeptical, however, especially since the UAE has not been above a bit of hype in the past.

- The US military is investing nearly $15 million in mines in northern Quebec and the Northwest Territories on national security grounds, apparently to limit China's ability to corner the market in critical minerals.

- The Competition Bureau is investigating two of Canada's largest grocery store chains for possible anti-competitive behaviour. Strangely, there's no comment from Sylvain Charlebois in the article; perhaps the media are starting to see through him.

News roundup, 24 May 2024

- Nikki Haley now says that she will be voting for Donald Trump, despite having previously called him "unstable and unhinged". Perhaps the fact that many of Trump's supporters are also unstable and unhinged, and moreover have a lot of guns, has compelled her to change her tune.

- Dan Lett argues in this article that the signs of improvement that are showing in the economy could be bad news for the Conservatives. I'd like to believe that this is true, but I seriously doubt it. The thing is, once the masses get it into their heads that it's "time for a change" (and there's no question that this government has had its fair share of disappointments, broken promises, and worse stuff like the Jody Wilson-Raybould affair) it's very hard to convince them to change course. There's a saying, "better the devil you know than the devil you don't know", but most people do not apply that to politics; far too many people figure they're all devils anyway, so might as well punish the current ones. In other words, they vote not out of idealism but out of vengeance.

- The public washrooms installed at Main and Higgins in Winnipeg have gotten national attention as a success story. Keeping them staffed adequately to make them tolerable to use does not come cheap, though.

- It appears that the far right has found themselves a preferred candidate for the byelection being held by the Louis Riel School Division following the resignation of Francine Champagne. They seem to like someone by the name of Sandra Saint-Cyr. So if you live in LRSD Ward 1, you now know who not to vote for.

- Many are worried that the US is falling behind China in the development of clean energy technology. Many others are worried that the American response, slapping punitive tariffs on the imports of such technologies from China, will make climate change worse than it has to be.

- Universities in Toronto and Waterloo are losing patience with the pro-Palestinian protest encampments on their campuses, and are issuing orders to move. The protesters seem to be defiant so far.

- The president of the University of Toronto Faculty Association, Terezia Zoric, is currently being investigated for antisemitism by the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. The accusation stems from a 2021 webinar in which she blamed "an entitled powerful Zionist minority" for blocking the hiring of a critic of Israel. It's an interesting grey area; if she'd singled out organizations (such as B'nai B'rith) for lobbying against the hiring I don't think any reasonable person would call that antisemitic, but the expression she used does sound like a potential dog whistle.

- New rules for bringing dogs into the US are causing alarm among some Canadians who cross the border frequently with their dogs. I'm certainly not opposed to giving snowbirds another hoop to jump through, though it gets a bit more problematic when you consider the fact that it applies to guide dogs and other service dogs.

- Two chaps at a Walmart parking lot in Nanaimo, BC got out the bear spray and tire irons in an attempt to settle the question of who was entitled to use a parking space.

News roundup, 23 May 2024

- Norway, Ireland, and Spain have announced that they will be recognizing a Palestinian state. Not surprisingly the Israelis are up in arms; they're withdrawing their ambassadors from those countries as well as summoning those countries' ambassadors and making them watch video of female Israeli captives seized in the October attack. They're thus implying, not so subtly, that support for a Palestinian state necessarily means support for such atrocities. Some would say that tarring the entire Palestinian people with one brush that way is, well, racist, but I guess we're not allowed to say that.

- The University of Manitoba is getting pushback for their decision to remove the video of Dr. Gem Newman's valedictory address; many are understandably a bit uncomfortable that a single hissy fit from a billionaire donor is enough to get something like this done. Meanwhile both Newman and others have weighed in on the donor's comments.

- Julian Assange will get the opportunity to appeal his deportation to the US. Apparently the court was asking for written assurances from the American authorities that Assange would be accorded the same rights as a US citizen under the First Amendment, and the Americans were unwilling to provide that.

- A family medical practice in Ottawa is discharging all of its out-of-province patients, citing administrative difficulties with referrals and the like. The thing is, Ottawa lies on the provincial boundary, and forms a single metro area with its neighbouring city of Gatineau, Quebec. Many people live in one city and access services in the other, so some flexibility on this matter would have been nice.

- The team at OpenAI who were focused on long-term AI risks has been disbanded. The team had been plagued with resignations for months, however due to a "non-disparagement agreement" in the documents that you have to sign when leaving there have been few details of why. There are suspicions, though, mostly associated with CEO Sam Altman.

- Some residents in Newmarket, Ontario are going bananas over a proposed condo building - because they're worried about its impact on the local Tim Hortons. You can't make this stuff up, can you.

- An 18 year old student at the University of Victoria has died of a fentanyl overdose. Her parents believe that the 911 operator and campus security did not act fast enough; the province has ordered a coroner's inquest.

- A bear that climbed a tree in Winnipeg's Wildwood neighbourhood was successfully tranquilized and transported out of the city.

- The apartment complex in west Winnipeg that was evacuated last week due to structural concerns is fenced in and is supposed to have 24 hour security. One evacuee found out the hard way how reliable that security is - someone cut through the fence and stole her motorcycle, damaging another bike in the process. Meanwhile, people who live in houses behind the building have been warned to be ready to evacuate as well in case the worst happens.

- A woman in Dauphin, Manitoba has been arrested after stealing a septic truck from nearby Ebb and Flow First Nation and leading police on a chase, at times veering into the oncoming lane. Happily nobody was hurt in this little impromptu bit of real-life GTA.