The latest salvo from the Conservatives is that Liberals are moral hypocrites for not acknowledging what they claim is a Chinese genocide against the Uyghurs of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. This is the lay of the land: There are approximately 11.77 million Uyghurs in China, with the majority living in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Uyghurs constitute roughly 44.96% of Xinjiang's population, making them one of the largest ethnic groups in the region, closely followed by the Han Chinese.

Canada and Australia used to be on par economically. That changed around 2010 when Australia started making hay with their trade with China. Canadian Conservatives have fully bought into American anti-China dogma. It was a trap we fell into when in his first term, Trump took Huawei's CFO Meng Wanzhou hostage. Trudeau's Liberal government rolled over for the U.S. extradition request and arrested her in Vancouver.

Canada and Australia used to be on par economically. That changed around 2010 when Australia started making hay with their trade with China. Canadian Conservatives have fully bought into American anti-China dogma. It was a trap we fell into when in his first term, Trump took Huawei's CFO Meng Wanzhou hostage. Trudeau's Liberal government rolled over for the U.S. extradition request and arrested her in Vancouver.

Gotta say that having an instant AI summary's gives one the opportunity to assess whether doing the heavy reading of original texts is worth the effort. The question is always, "Why". It segues well into Walter Benjamin's observations of the rise of fascism in Germany in the early 20th century.

1980 is a significant date in the Kondratiev model of long waves of economic activity where many economic data broke trend, and so too the chart of mean global temperatures confirms the same about planetary warming. I have cited numerous times that 2022 is also a year where number of key economic data broke trend in the opposite direction, suggesting to me that we have started a new long wave.

Walter Scheidel's thesis in his new book, The
Great Leveller: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the 21st Century, is that only violent events have significantly lessened inequality. "For thousands of years, civilisation did not lend itself to peaceful equalisation. Across a wide range of societies anddifferent levels of development, stability favoured economic inequality. This was as true of Pharaonic Egypt as itwas of Victorian England,

This observation from Kondratiev's paper in 1927, Long Waves In Economic Life, is one of many that can be attributed to our contemporary experience. The mid-wave crisis peak that announced the recession of the last wave was undoubtedly, for the sake of assigning a single point, ...1980 when gold prices and interest rates hit their highs. It was also the period in which computer and internet technology made its appearance.

The dependency ratio is a demographic measure that compares the number of people typically not in the workforce (dependents) with the number of people who are typically of working age (the productive population). It is an indicator of the potential economic burden on the working population and helps in planning for social services like healthcare and education.

The TMX was in full operation as of May of 2025. The idea that any country can be an "energy powerhouse" in the future based on oil contradicts the trend towards electrification that is the object of the energy transition. Carney has stated at the release of the MOU with Alberta that he is open to approving a new pipeline to tidewater so long as private capital pays for it.

Populist conservatives have lost the plot of value pluralism and are tending to fascism. "There are innumerable differences which obviously add to the interest of life, and without which it would be unendurably dull. Again, there are differences which can neither be left unsettled nor be settled without a struggle, and a real one, but in regard to which the struggle is rather between inconsistent forms of good than between good and evil.

The Arctic amplification is heating the north 2-4X faster than the rest of the planet. The Boreal forests are burning and south of it is in drought. Quebec is currently importing more electricity than usual and is in a net importer position to prudently manage its water reservoirs, which are at low levels due to persistent drought conditions since 2023. 2025 is on track to be a "record year" for imports.

Conservative journalists and sundry hacks are lauding PM Carney's turn to the centre of politics with his MOU signed with Alberta, but the understanding that still holds is that any expansion of oil & gas production without a commensurate plan to abate carbon emissions is absurd. Numerous plans can do it, but carbon capture is a poor technology to rely on. Hastening the transition to EVs is a better one, and one hopes that Canadians will be able to buy relatively inexpensive Chinese ones when the tariff is lifted.

A modern industrial state is uniquely defined as having advanced manufacturing capacity, especially in complex machinery like cars, trucks, planes and trains. Canada's transition from a mainly rural economy to an industrial one was forced by the Second World War when Canadian manufacturing capacity was augmented to meet the demands of Allied campaign. C.D. Howe was the key minister in McKenzie King's wartime government who oversaw it.

What is shaping up in political discourse is a Conservative Party willingness to give up Canada’s auto industry. Doug Ford is no longer recognized as one of theirs. Subsidies result in a net loss in this industry, they say. What’s left in the Conservative imagination is to go all in on oil and gas, climate science be damned…but O & G is also heavily subsidized and if you add up attendant costs associated with this industry, it is a bad bet and it is only getting worse.

Gallium is a byproduct of aluminum production in Canada, with companies like Rio Tinto actively developing processes to extract it from their alumina refinery in Quebec. While historically not a significant source, this is changing as global demand for gallium increases and supply chains diversify.

That Conservatives are trying to resurrect the SNC/Lavalin “scandal” is a measure of their desperation. It was always contended on a weak deontological argument that SNC should be punished for their sins. In fact the OECD who formulated the rules meant to eliminate the use of bribery in international business, promoted the use of deferred prosecution agreements in national courts,

The turn to religion instead of communicative rationality as the path to hope for human progress is the most damning feature of this fascist turn in American history, ...not because of the religiosity per se, but because it overturns the constitutional criterion of the separation of church and state. "Alexis de Tocqueville observed that religion was indispensable to American democracy,

Religion, eh? I always wondered when the religious alliance of Evangelicals and Catholics would split in MAGA. In the private Christian academies in Saskatchewan — which are well subsidized from the public trough — They teach a secondary school curriculum from Bob Jones University. I've read parts of it which openly accuse Catholics of being heretics.

On 31 January 1933, Schmitt remarked that with Adolf Hitler's appointment as Chancellor, "one can say that 'Hegel died."

A base model DYD sells in China for $9,000 US, but there is a lot of government subsidy in that price. It's not inconceivable that BYD could be enticed to manufacture in Canada with a good deal on our aluminum and sell a model for $20,000 Cdn. Trigger the substitution effect. With an EV, owners will look to rooftop solar and sodium-ion storage batteries in the home to keep them charged. Trigger the energy transition now!