Wednesday Night #2216

Canada and Quebec
Major political developments today:
Let the Games begin!
Jagmeet Singh ends Liberal-NDP deal that helped support Trudeau’s minority government and will decide on a case-by-case basis whether to support the government on confidence matters.
Paul Wells comments The tortoise and the other tortoise
It’ll be a change election. Eventually.
and
A crack in the CAQ?
Quebec’s ‘super minister’ of economy and energy resigns from cabinet
Pierre Fitzgibbon had several ongoing projects to develop Quebec’s EV sector
Passion for politics is gone, Fitzgibbon says after resigning from cabinet
Legault urged Fitzgibbon to leave sooner than he had initially wanted
Also, hoping that George Kestevan will help us understand what prompted BC United Leader Kevin Falcon to support the B.C. Conservatives
The quakes that led to a seismic shift in B.C. politics just weeks before the provincial election

U.S. election campaign
62 DAYS TO GO — Election Day (November 5 aka Guy Fawkes Day) is nine weeks from yesterday [Tuesday]. Absentee ballots will start getting mailed out in North Carolina on Friday. Early voting starts in Pennsylvania on Sept. 16. The first presidential debate -Donald Trump v Kamala Harris- is six days away and Politico notes that Kamala Harris’ campaign and the Democratic National Committee said Tuesday they are sending nearly $25 million to support down-ballot Democrats — an earlier investment and far more money than the top of the ticket has sent in past election years.
Trivia -or not- Jimmy McCain, a son of the late Arizona senator, registers as a Democrat and backs Harris

Israel, Gaza, Hamas
Thomas Friedman really does not like Benjamin Netanyahu and makes his case most convincingly -as if we needed convincing. How Netanyahu Is Trying to Save Himself, Elect Trump and Defeat Harris
In our view, a profoundly cynical gesture Israeli attacks in Gaza kill 35 Palestinians but pauses allow third day of polio vaccinations as ceasefire hopes dim and our vocabulary expands to include the Philadelphi corridor (How a narrow strip of scrubland has become an obstacle to a cease-fire in Gaza). Despite protests by tens of thousands of people across Israel, Netanyahu will not budge Netanyahu Stands Firm on Cease-Fire Terms Amid Growing Outrage in Israel Even his most loyal friend, President Biden seems to be fed up.

While we observe events in Israel, Ukraine, Russia, Venezuela, Lebanon, and yes, Mongolia, China is hosting African leaders at the 9th triennial 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) African leaders gather to hear Beijing’s pitch. It is aimed at deepening strategic coordination between China and Africa – but China’s ongoing economic woes have shifted the tone considerably.

Three years since the western allies shamefully exited Afghanistan, leaving the country helpless in the hands of the Taliban, the BBC published Heart and Soul: Afghanistan 20 years on
(BBC Documentary Podcast) Twenty years ago, reporter Julia Paul was teaching media to young women in an Afghanistan where the Taliban were in retreat, if only temporarily. Now she has tracked down two of them again to find out how their lives have fared in the decades since. Some have fled abroad while others are still in Afghanistan, imprisoned in their homes. But even for those who have escaped, life is far from easy. As one of the army of secular western aid workers that flooded Afghan society all those years ago, Julia discusses with the women whether or not the West should have intervened in the first place.

I have recently been reading Pegasus: How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy by Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud , the engrossing behind-the-scenes story of one of the most sophisticated and invasive surveillance weapons ever created, used by governments around the world, and the incredible multinational team of investigative journalists and editors who exposed it.
Pegasus is a spyware developed by the Israeli cyber-arms company NSO Group that is designed to be covertly and remotely installed on mobile phones running iOS and Android.
Pegasus by Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud review – spyware hiding in plain sight. What has struck me particularly as a devotee of spy/action movies is how casually we accept the idea that anyone’s cell phone can be monitored, GPS will reveal the bad guy’s location … The problem is that the technology applies to everyone, not only the fictional -or not- bad guys. And combine the technology with drones …
This in turn leads to serious consideration of the ramifications of AI – let us think about and discuss at much greater length. Meantime, I urge you to read Pegasus.
You might also like to have a look at The Feds vs. California: Inside the twin efforts to regulate AI in the US

We have been reading complaints about overtourism for some time, but little in a Canadian context.
Too many people, not enough management: A look at the chaos of ‘overtourism’ in the summer of 2024
Now, however, the dreaded disease has infected Peggy’s Cove lighthouse
Peggy’s Cove, N.S., the backdrop of many selfies, lays down the law for risky tourist behaviour

Always keen to promote new ventures, accomplishments of the talented Sauvé alumni. This week, it is
Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King – Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World by Anupreeta Das, finance editor of The NYT. Sadly, the Guardian and WaPo reviews are not great, but still, it’s a huge achievement!

Investigative journalist Stevie Cameron dies at home in Toronto, age 80
Among Cameron’s best-known works is her investigation of then-prime minister Brian Mulroney’s involvement in the purchase of new Airbus jets –On The Take: Crime, Corruption And Greed In The Mulroney Years

A very long and important read
The good, the not-so-good, and the ugly of the UN’s blueprint for AI
A leaked report from the United Nations’ High-Level Advisory Body on AI indicates a desire for increasing UN involvement in international AI governance functions.
Rapidly expanding networks on AI policy, safety, and development have produced unprecedented levels of international cooperation around AI.
(Brookings) …the United Nations aims to impose order on this expanding landscape. Secretary General António Guterres—a prominent voice in calling for a global body to govern perceived existential risks of emerging foundational AI models—initiated a global digital compact to be finalized alongside this September’s UN General Assembly.

An ugly case of ‘false balance’ in the New York Times
The mainstream media is still getting it wrong about Trump
Margaret Sullivan
Nearly 10 years after Trump declared his candidacy in 2015, the media has not figured out how to cover him. (My last major piece in the Washington Post laid out how coverage should change if Trump decided to run again, and I’ve also written recommendations here from the Media and Democracy Project.)
And what’s more — what’s worse — they don’t seem to want to change. Editors and reporters, with a few exceptions, really don’t see the problem as they normalize Trump. Nor do they appear to listen to valid criticism. They may not even be aware of it, or may think, “well, when both sides are mad at us, we must be doing it right.” Maybe they simply fear being labeled liberal.

I only came across this very recently
The Secrets of Friendship
Step into the world of “friendship detectives,” who are unravelling the mysteries of social behaviours in humans and other animals.
Why do we have friends? What makes dogs our best friends? Scientists decode the mysterious world of friendship
Judith Pyke set out to answer these questions and more in new documentary The Secrets of Friendship
What makes dogs our best friends? Do dolphins and humans have anything in common when it comes to friendship behaviours? Why do we have friends in the first place? (Spoiler alert: they’re good for us!)
In The Secrets of Friendship, scientists investigate the social lives of humans and other animals in the hunt for clues and patterns to decode the mysterious world of friendship. …
In the U.K., visit the Cambridge BabyLab and the world’s first ToddlerLab, in London, where friendship researchers test tykes with high-tech gear. At UCLA, scientists investigate if brain scans can predict who will become friends. And in Winnipeg, a researcher investigates how certain activities and types of conversations can create closer friendships than others.

An enviable change of pace (lifestyle)
Trading Porsches for a Houseboat and a Gentler Way of Life
These days, the Dutch entrepreneur Rick Vintage lives alone on an old boat, a 75-foot-long vessel from 1895 called “Vrouwe Jacoba” (Mrs. Jacoba, in Dutch) on a canal in a quiet corner of Amsterdam. It is moored in front of a 4,800-square-foot garden that contains a tiny house, now inhabited by his daughter Lux, 18, who comes on board mornings for coffee before dashing off to school. He lives with his dog, Moos. There are no passers-by, and he often dines alone on the deck.

Nicholas Kristof: Here’s Why We Shouldn’t Demean Trump Voters
Some of the best advice Democrats have received recently came from Bill Clinton in his speech at the Democratic National Convention.
…he cautioned against demeaning voters who don’t share liberal values. …too often since 2016, the liberal impulse has been to demonize anyone at all sympathetic to Donald Trump as a racist and bigot. This has been politically foolish, for it’s difficult to win votes from people you’re disparaging.
It has also seemed to me morally offensive, particularly when well-educated and successful elites are scorning disadvantaged, working-class Americans who have been left behind economically and socially and in many cases are dying young. They deserve empathy, not insults.