Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Mark Kreidler notes that people from around the globe are staying away from the U.S. in droves - due to both the risk of being a foreigner in a country looking to detain anybody fitting that description, and the desire to avoid rewarding a rogue regime. And Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson write about the increasing number of Americans choosing to leave the U.S. rather than suffering under the violence and corruption of the Trump administration. 

- Sadiq Khan highlights how UK Labour has only hurt itself by imposing right-wing bigotry as policy rather than giving effect to the progressive values of its base. And Justin Ling questions Mark Carney's cheerleading for the U.S.' wars of conquest, while Lloyd Axworthy discusses how Carney has chosen to enable (and indeed embrace) U.S. aggression in violation of international law. 

- Ajit Niranjan reports on the shocking loss of marine life as a result of the climate breakdown, with drops in marine biomass of up to 20% in a single year. Greg Harman discusses new modeling showing that over 2% of all deaths in a Texas summer - numbering up to a thousand in any given year - can be traced back to extreme heat caused by global warming. And Sadie Harley examines how carbon dioxide levels in the human body are increasing dangerously. 

- Hayley Smith discusses yet another pernicious application of artificial intelligence, as fabricated "public comments" were used by a California environmental authority as reason not to phase out fossil gas appliances. 

- Finally, Erika Edwards reports on the tens of millions of dollars in traceable losses caused by the anti-vaxxers' choice to spread measles in the U.S. - while hinting at far more severe damage which may never be observable. 

New column day

Here, on Ottawa's Canada 150 event which was planned solely for the benefit of VIPs and businesses rather than mere people - and how that reality fits the Trudeau Libs' general governing themes.

For further reading...
- Again, CBC reported on the Canada Day fiasco, while the Ottawa Citizen published accounts from a few of the people who ran into it.
- CBC also followed up with Ottawa Tourism - which is the source of the column's observations about full hotels and restaurants being seen as a far higher priority than the well-being of participants - while also going into a bit more detail about the security arrangements.
- And Rob Drinkwater wrote about the trumped-up outrage over Justin Trudeau's omission of Alberta from his list of provinces and territories.
- Finally, Amy Minsky reports on the Libs' continued use of cash-for-access fund-raising. And PressProgress reports on polling done for Finance Canada which makes it clear the public knows that Trudeau and company aren't governing in the interests of the middle class.

On embarrassments

In fairness to Diane Ablonczy, Jane Taber's column today omits the obvious explanation as to why she insulted a crowd of travel writers by wasting their time with such insights as the observation that Ontario is "quite a bit east" of Whistler. But let this be a lesson to Ablonczy: it's a bad idea to talk down to better-informed crowds as if they were Conservative supporters.