Tag Archives: Politics

In The Future Cyberwar Will Be Primary Theater For Superpowers

Cybersecurity expert explains how virtual wars are fought

With the Russia-Ukraine war in full swing, cybersecurity experts point to a cyber front that had been forming online long before Russian troops crossed the border. Even in the months leading up to the outbreak of war, Ukrainian websites were attacked and altered to display threatening messages about the coming invasion.

“In response to Russian warfare actions, the hacking collective Anonymous launched a series of attacks against Russia, with the country’s state media being the main target. So we can see cyber warfare in action with new types of malware flooding both countries, thousands of sites crashing under DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks, and hacktivism thriving on both sides of barricades,” Daniel Markuson, a cybersecurity expert at NordVPN, says.

The methods of cyberwarfare

In the past decade, the amount of time people spend online has risen drastically. Research by NordVPN has shown that Americans spend around 21 years of their lives online. With our life so dependent on the internet, cyber wars can cause very real damage. Some of the goals online “soldiers” are trying to pursue include:

  • Sabotage and terrorism

The intent of many cyber warfare actions is to sabotage and cause indiscriminate damage. From taking a site offline with a DDoS attack to defacing webpages with political messages, cyber terrorists launch multiple operations every year. One event that had the most impact happened in Turkey when Iranian hackers managed to knock out the power grid for around twelve hours, affecting more than 40 million people.

  • Espionage

While cyber espionage also occurs between corporations, with competitors vying for patents and sensitive information, it’s an essential strategy for governments engaging in covert warfare. Chinese intelligence services are regularly named as the culprits in such operations, although they consistently deny the accusations.

  • Civilian activism (hacktivism)

The growing trend of hacktivism has seen civilian cyber activists take on governments and authorities around the world. One example of hacktivism is Anonymous, a group that has claimed responsibility for assaults on government agencies in the US. In 2022, Anonymous began a targeted cyber campaign against Russia after it invaded Ukraine in an attempt to disrupt government systems and combat Russian propaganda.

  • Propaganda and disinformation

In 2020, 81 countries were found to have used some form of social media manipulation. This type of manipulation was usually ordered by government agencies, political parties, or politicians. Such campaigns, which largely involve the spread of fake news, tended to focus on three key goals – distract or divert conversations away from important issues, increase polarization between religious, political, or social groups, and suppress fundamental human rights, such as the right to freedom of expression or freedom of information.

The future of cyber warfare

“Governments, corporations, and the public need to understand this emerging landscape and protect themselves by taking care of their physical security as well as cybersecurity. From the mass cyberattacks of 2008’s Russo-Georgian War to the cyber onslaught faced by Ukraine today, this is the new battleground for both civil and international conflicts,” Daniel Markuson says.

Markuson predicts that in the future, cyber war will become the primary theater of war for global superpowers. He also thinks that terrorist cells may focus their efforts on targeting civilian infrastructure and other high-risk networks: terrorists would be even harder to detect and could launch attacks anywhere in the world. Lastly, Markuson thinks that activism will become more virtual and allow citizens to hold large governmental authorities to account.

A regular person can’t do much to fight in a cyber war or to protect themselves from the consequences.

However, educating yourself, paying attention to the reliability of sources of information, and maintaining a critical attitude  to everything you read online could help  increase your awareness and feel less affected by propaganda.  For the Silo, Darija Grobova.

Canada Should Embrace Trump Presidency Opportunities

From: Chris Christie
To: Nervous Canadians 
Date: November 6, 2024 
Re: Canada Should Embrace the Opportunities of a Second Trump Presidency

A second Donald Trump presidency, if approached strategically, offers Canada more opportunities than risks.

Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric is often erratic, of that there is no doubt. And I, as you might have heard, am not a Donald Trump advocate.

But what happens in governance under Trump is a far cry from his provocative online posts or bombastic speeches, as I argued in the latest C.D. Howe Institute Regent Debate. His track record speaks for itself, and whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, Canada has already benefitted from Trump-era policies.

Let’s take the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement – CUSMA in the Canadian rendering – as a prime example. Trump’s renegotiation of NAFTA wasn’t just about putting “America first.” It was about reshaping trade relationships in North America to benefit all three countries. The agreement secured economic ties between the US, Canada, and Mexico in a way that ensures long-term growth for all parties involved.

Trump views that agreement as one of his crowning achievements, and rest assured, it’s not going anywhere. It is a durable platform for growth in North American trade.

Looking forward, the question isn’t whether Trump is unpredictable. It’s whether Canada can recognize and leverage the opportunities his policies present.

With Trump re-elected, his administration will continue to focus on policies that drive economic growth – lower taxes, reduced regulations, and energy independence. A booming US economy means a stronger Canada, as our two economies are deeply intertwined. When one prospers, the other stands to benefit through increased trade and investment.

Trump’s approach to trade – especially tariffs – has often been misunderstood. Yes, his speech-making is aggressive. But we need to separate rhetoric from reality. Trump’s actual policies were more measured than many anticipated. And they will be again. 

The real adversary for Donald Trump is China, not Canada. If Trump tightens the screws on China’s unfair trade practices, it could create space for Canadian companies to flourish on a more level playing field, particularly in sectors like technology and intellectual property, where China has been a major violator.

Trump’s economic philosophy – focused on cutting taxes and regulations to unleash private-sector growth – should also serve as a wake-up call for Canada. Under Prime Minister Trudeau, Canada has taken a ruinous policy road, with higher taxes and more government intervention in business.

But what if Canada aligned itself more closely with the pro-growth policies Trump advocates? 

Imagine the potential for Canadian businesses if they operated in an environment with fewer barriers to growth. A thriving private sector in Canada would strengthen the economy and create more opportunities for collaboration and trade with the US.

I won’t pretend that a second term comes without challenges. But instead of focusing on the personality occupying the Oval Office, Canada should focus on how to navigate the opportunities presented by our shared future as neighbours and trade partners.

It’s time to stop seeing Trump as an unpredictable threat and start recognizing the potential opportunities his policies can bring. Canada stands to benefit if it plays its cards right. For the Silo, Chris Christie.

Chris Christie was the 55th Governor of New Jersey and a participant in the C.D. Howe Institute’s recent Regent Debate. Send comments to Chris via this link.

Rethinking Canada Tariffs On China EVs

Via friends at C.D. Howe Institute. A version of this memo first appeared in the Financial Post.

To: Canadian trade watchers 
From: Ari Van Assche 
Date:  August, 2024
Re: Canada’s Electric Vehicle De-Risking Trilemma 

With the recent wrap-up of Ottawa’s month-long public consultation on levying tariffs on electrical vehicles (EVs) made in China, let’s paraphrase a story Nobel Prize-winner Paul Krugman once used to explain the often under-appreciated benefits of free trade:

Consider a Canadian entrepreneur who starts a new business that uses secret technology to transform Canadian lumber and canola into affordable EVs. She is lauded as a champion of industry for her innovative spirit and commitment to Net Zero. But a suspicious reporter discovers that what she is really doing is exporting Canadian-made lumber and canola and using the proceeds to purchase Chinese-made EVs. Sentiment turns sharply against her. On social media, she is widely denounced as a fraud who is destroying Canadian jobs and threatening national security. Parliament passes a unanimous resolution condemning her.

Going the other direction: China is Canada’s third largest destination for agricultural products.

This story underscores a critical dilemma that should have been central in the public consultations.

Those opposing tariffs argue that trade is a potent yet undervalued tool in our fight against climate change: It provides Canada access to low-emissions technologies at increasingly affordable prices, which is essential for transitioning society away from carbon-intensive energy sources. In contrast, those in favour are concerned about supply security, fearing excessive reliance on our biggest geopolitical rival for low-emissions technologies. They warn against swapping the West’s age-old energy insecurity in oil for insecurity in the supply of critical minerals and EV batteries.

The $70,000 cad Polestar 2 EV produced by Volvo. In 2010, Geely Holding Group a Chinese automotive group bought Volvo.

Copilot AI

“As of now, the Chinese electric vehicle (EV) market is making strides globally, but in Canada, the landscape is still evolving: Tesla Model Y and Polestar 2: While not exclusively Chinese, the Tesla Model Y (which is produced in China) and the Polestar 2 (a subsidiary of Volvo, which has Chinese ownership) are currently the most prominent Chinese-made EVs available in Canada. These models have gained attention due to their performance, range, and brand reputation1.”

I examined some of the national security issues that have surfaced in the discussion surrounding supply chains for low-emissions energy technologies like EV batteries in my recent C.D. Howe Institute report.

After examining the various de-risking policies governments have implemented, including their downsides and unintended consequences, I conclude Ottawa probably should develop de-risking policies.

But it needs to apply them judiciously, prudently and rarely. And it needs to justify them with credible, detailed evidence regarding concerns about supply security and whether domestic industry really would be able to compete if market conditions were fairer. This will be important in upholding Canada’s reputation as a leading proponent of the rules-based multilateral system.

China’s role in the supply chains of low-emissions energy technologies does raise real security concerns. China has established near monopolies in several critical minerals and other components of EV batteries, solar panels and wind turbines. No ready alternatives are produced in other countries. For example, 79 percent of global production capacity of polysilicon, which is key for solar cell production, is in China. The next biggest producers, Germany and the United States, have difficulty competing with China’s high-quality, ultra-cheap polysilicon.

China’s monopolies create chokepoints that could enable its government to manipulate production to pursue its own geopolitical ambitions.

Precedents exist: China blocked rare-earth exports to Japan in 2010 and banned exports of rare-earth processing technology in 2023.

Several countries have started adopting de-risking policies to reduce their reliance on these Chinese chokepoints, usually either onshoring or friendshoring. Canada’s recent Critical Minerals Strategy is typical. It was designed in part to reduce this country’s dependence on foreign-mined and processed critical raw materials by, among other things, allocating $1.5 billion to support Canadian critical minerals projects related to advanced manufacturing, processing and recycling.

But these de-risking policies come at a cost.

Ottawa needs to carefully navigate a “policy trilemma” as it strives to formulate a policy agenda that simultaneously targets three goals: Advancing security, promoting low-emissions energy adoption, and capturing the benefits of trade for consumers and businesses.

Proposed steep tariffs on Chinese EV imports provide a good example of the trilemma.

They may well safeguard security by protecting a domestic production base. But they could discourage the uptake of EVs, which are already experiencing a slowdown in sales. Moreover, such unilateral action against China could escalate geopolitical tensions, thereby generating new risks, including Chinese retaliation. The path to effective de-risking is clearly fraught with trade-offs and requires careful navigation.

There is scant evidence that China is on its way to becoming a near-monopoly in global EV production itself, but it may seek to benefit from its near-monopoly in key inputs. The ultimate question that the government should answer is, therefore, whether the security concerns regarding these chokepoints, and more generally China’s willingness to compete fairly under these conditions, justify the costs and risks of higher tariffs. The burden on Ottawa is to provide concrete evidence to that effect before imposing an inherently costly tariff on Canadians.

Ari Van Assche is a professor of international business at HEC Montréal and Fellow-in-Residence at the C.D. Howe Institute.

Feds False News Checker Tool To Use AI- At Risk Of Language & Political Bias

Ottawa-Funded Misinformation Detection Tool to Rely on Artificial Intelligence

Ottawa-Funded Misinformation Detection Tool to Rely on Artificial Intelligence
Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge speaks to reporters on Parliament Hill after Bell Media announces job cuts, in Ottawa on Feb. 8, 2024. (The Canadian Press/Patrick Doyle)

A new federally funded tool being developed with the aim of helping Canadians detect online misinformation will rely on artificial intelligence (AI), Ottawa has announced.

Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge said on July 29 that Ottawa is providing almost $300,000 cad to researchers at Université de Montréal (UdeM) to develop the tool.

“Polls confirm that most Canadians are very concerned about the rise of mis- and disinformation,” St-Onge wrote on social media. “We’re fighting for Canadians to get the facts” by supporting the university’s independent project, she added.

Canadian Heritage says the project will develop a website and web browser extension dedicated to detecting misinformation.

The department says the project will use large AI language models capable of detecting misinformation across different languages in various formats such as text or video, and contained within different sources of information.

“This technology will help implement effective behavioral nudges to mitigate the proliferation of ‘fake news’ stories in online communities,” says Canadian Heritage.

Related-

OpenAI, Google DeepMind Employees Warn of ‘Serious Risks’ Posed by AI Technology

OpenAI, Google DeepMind Employees Warn of ‘Serious Risks’ Posed by AI Technology

With the browser extension, users will be notified if they come across potential misinformation, which the department says will reduce the likelihood of the content being shared.

Project lead and UdeM professor Jean-François Godbout said in an email that the tool will rely mostly on AI-based systems such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

“The system uses mostly a large language model, such as ChatGPT, to verify the validity of a proposition or a statement by relying on its corpus (the data which served for its training),” Godbout wrote in French.

The political science professor added the system will also be able to consult “distinct and reliable external sources.” After considering all the information, the system will produce an evaluation to determine whether the content is true or false, he said, while qualifying its degree of certainty.

Godbout said the reasoning for the decision will be provided to the user, along with the references that were relied upon, and that in some cases the system could say there’s insufficient information to make a judgment.

Asked about concerns that the detection model could be tainted by AI shortcomings such as bias, Godbout said his previous research has demonstrated his sources are “not significantly ideologically biased.”

“That said, our system should rely on a variety of sources, and we continue to explore working with diversified and balanced sources,” he said. “We realize that generative AI models have their limits, but we believe they can be used to help Canadians obtain better information.”

The professor said that the fundamental research behind the project was conducted before receiving the federal grant, which only supports the development of a web application.

Bias Concerns

The reliance on AI to determine what is true or false could have some pitfalls, with large language models being criticized for having political biases.

Such concerns about the neutrality of AI have been raised by billionaire Elon Musk, who owns X and its AI chatbot Grok.

British and Brazilian researchers from the University of East Anglia published a study in January that sought to measure ChatGPT’s political bias.

“We find robust evidence that ChatGPT presents a significant and systematic political bias toward the Democrats in the US, Lula in Brazil, and the Labour Party in the UK,” they wrote. Researchers said there are real concerns that ChatGPT and other large language models in general can “extend or even amplify the existing challenges involving political processes posed by the Internet and social media.”

OpenAI says ChatGPT is “not free from biases and stereotypes, so users and educators should carefully review its content.”

Misinformation and Disinformation

The federal government’s initiatives to tackle misinformation and disinformation have been multifaceted.

The funds provided to the Université de Montréal are part of a larger program to shape online information, the Digital Citizen Initiative. The program supports researchers and civil society organizations that promote a “healthy information ecosystem,” according to Canadian Heritage.

The Liberal government has also passed major bills, such as C-11 and C-18, which impact the information environment.

Bill C-11 has revamped the Broadcasting Act, creating rules for the production and discoverability of Canadian content and giving increased regulatory powers to the CRTC over online content.

Bill C-18 created the obligation for large online platforms to share revenues with news organizations for the display of links. This legislation was promoted by then-Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez as a tool to strengthen news media in a “time of greater mistrust and disinformation.”

These two pieces of legislation were followed by Bill C-63 in February to enact the Online Harms Act. Along with seeking to better protect children online, it would create steep penalties for saying things deemed hateful on the web.

There is some confusion about what the latest initiative with UdeM specifically targets. Canadian Heritage says the project aims to counter misinformation, whereas the university says it’s aimed at disinformation. The two concepts are often used in the same sentence when officials signal an intent to crack down on content they deem inappropriate, but a key characteristic distinguishes the two.

The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security defines misinformation as “false information that is not intended to cause harm”—which means it could have been posted inadvertently.

Meanwhile, the Centre defines disinformation as being “intended to manipulate, cause damage and guide people, organizations and countries in the wrong direction.” It can be crafted by sophisticated foreign state actors seeking to gain politically.

Minister St-Onge’s office has not responded to a request for clarification as of this posts publication.

In describing its project to counter disinformation, UdeM said events like the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, the Brexit referendum, and the COVID-19 pandemic have “demonstrated the limits of current methods to detect fake news which have trouble following the volume and rapid evolution of disinformation.” For the Silo, Noe Chartier/ The Epoch Times.

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.

7000 Words About The Dubious Refragmentation Of The Economy

One advantage of being old is that you can see change happen in your lifetime.

A lot of the change I’ve seen is fragmentation. For example, US politics and now Canadian politics are much more polarized than they used to be. Culturally we have ever less common ground and though inclusiveness is preached by the media and the Left, special interest groups and policies have a polarizing effect. The creative class flocks to a handful of happy cities, abandoning the rest. And increasing economic inequality means the spread between rich and poor is growing too. I’d like to propose a hypothesis: that all these trends are instances of the same phenomenon. And moreover, that the cause is not some force that’s pulling us apart, but rather the erosion of forces that had been pushing us together.

Worse still, for those who worry about these trends, the forces that were pushing us together were an anomaly, a one-time combination of circumstances that’s unlikely to be repeated—and indeed, that we would not want to repeat.

Describe How a Mass Culture Developed in America - JeankruwHumphrey

The two forces were war (above all World War II), and the rise of large corporations.

The effects of World War II were both economic and social. Economically, it decreased variation in income. Like all modern armed forces, America’s were socialist economically. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. More or less. Higher ranking members of the military got more (as higher ranking members of socialist societies always do), but what they got was fixed according to their rank. And the flattening effect wasn’t limited to those under arms, because the US economy was conscripted too. Between 1942 and 1945 all wages were set by the National War Labor Board. Like the military, they defaulted to flatness. And this national standardization of wages was so pervasive that its effects could still be seen years after the war ended. [1]

Business owners weren’t supposed to be making money either.

FDR said “not a single war millionaire” would be permitted. To ensure that, any increase in a company’s profits over prewar levels was taxed at 85%. And when what was left after corporate taxes reached individuals, it was taxed again at a marginal rate of 93%. [2]

Socially too the war tended to decrease variation. Over 16 million men and women from all sorts of different backgrounds were brought together in a way of life that was literally uniform. Service rates for men born in the early 1920s approached 80%. And working toward a common goal, often under stress, brought them still closer together.

Though strictly speaking World War II lasted less than 4 years for the USA, its effects lasted longer and cycled North towards Canada.

Wars make central governments more powerful, and World War II was an extreme case of this. In the US, as in all the other Allied countries, the federal government was slow to give up the new powers it had acquired. Indeed, in some respects the war didn’t end in 1945; the enemy just switched to the Soviet Union. In tax rates, federal power, defense spending, conscription, and nationalism the decades after the war looked more like wartime than prewar peacetime. [3] And the social effects lasted too. The kid pulled into the army from behind a mule team in West Virginia didn’t simply go back to the farm afterward. Something else was waiting for him, something that looked a lot like the army.

If total war was the big political story of the 20th century, the big economic story was the rise of new kind of company. And this too tended to produce both social and economic cohesion. [4]

The 20th century was the century of the big, national corporation. General Electric, General Foods, General Motors. Developments in finance, communications, transportation, and manufacturing enabled a new type of company whose goal was above all scale. Version 1 of this world was low-res: a Duplo world of a few giant companies dominating each big market. [5]

The late 19th and early 20th centuries had been a time of consolidation, led especially by J. P. Morgan. Thousands of companies run by their founders were merged into a couple hundred giant ones run by professional managers. Economies of scale ruled the day. It seemed to people at the time that this was the final state of things. John D. Rockefeller said in 1880

Image result for john d rockefeller

The day of combination is here to stay. Individualism has gone, never to return.

He turned out to be mistaken, but he seemed right for the next hundred years.

The consolidation that began in the late 19th century continued for most of the 20th. By the end of World War II, as Michael Lind writes, “the major sectors of the economy were either organized as government-backed cartels or dominated by a few oligopolistic corporations.”

For consumers this new world meant the same choices everywhere, but only a few of them. When I grew up there were only 2 or 3 of most things, and since they were all aiming at the middle of the market there wasn’t much to differentiate them.

One of the most important instances of this phenomenon was in TV.

Popular culture and daily life of Americans in the 1950s - WWJD

Here there were 3 choices: NBC, CBS, and ABC. Plus public TV for eggheads and communists (jk). The programs the 3 networks offered were indistinguishable. In fact, here there was a triple pressure toward the center. If one show did try something daring, local affiliates in conservative markets would make them stop. Plus since TVs were expensive whole families watched the same shows together, so they had to be suitable for everyone.

And not only did everyone get the same thing, they got it at the same time. It’s difficult to imagine now, but every night tens of millions of families would sit down together in front of their TV set watching the same show, at the same time, as their next door neighbors. What happens now with the Super Bowl used to happen every night. We were literally in sync. [6]

In a way mid-century TV culture was good. The view it gave of the world was like you’d find in a children’s book, and it probably had something of the effect that (parents hope) children’s books have in making people behave better. But, like children’s books, TV was also misleading. Dangerously misleading, for adults. In his autobiography, Robert MacNeil talks of seeing gruesome images that had just come in from Vietnam and thinking, we can’t show these to families while they’re having dinner.

I know how pervasive the common culture was, because I tried to opt out of it, and it was practically impossible to find alternatives.

When I was 13 I realized, more from internal evidence than any outside source, that the ideas we were being fed on TV were crap, and I stopped watching it. [7] But it wasn’t just TV. It seemed like everything around me was crap. The politicians all saying the same things, the consumer brands making almost identical products with different labels stuck on to indicate how prestigious they were meant to be, the balloon-frame houses with fake “colonial” skins, the cars with several feet of gratuitous metal on each end that started to fall apart after a couple years, the “red delicious” apples that were red but only nominally apples. And in retrospect, it was crap. [8]

But when I went looking for alternatives to fill this void, I found practically nothing. There was no Internet then. The only place to look was in the chain bookstore in our local shopping mall. [9] There I found a copy of The Atlantic. I wish I could say it became a gateway into a wider world, but in fact I found it boring and incomprehensible. Like a kid tasting whisky for the first time and pretending to like it, I preserved that magazine as carefully as if it had been a book. I’m sure I still have it somewhere. But though it was evidence that there was, somewhere, a world that wasn’t red delicious, I didn’t find it till college.

It wasn’t just as consumers that the big companies made us similar. They did as employers too. Within companies there were powerful forces pushing people toward a single model of how to look and act. IBM was particularly notorious for this, but they were only a little more extreme than other big companies. And the models of how to look and act varied little between companies. Meaning everyone within this world was expected to seem more or less the same. And not just those in the corporate world, but also everyone who aspired to it—which in the middle of the 20th century meant most people who weren’t already in it. For most of the 20th century, working-class people tried hard to look middle class. You can see it in old photos. Few adults aspired to look dangerous in 1950.

But the rise of national corporations didn’t just compress us culturally. It compressed us economically too, and on both ends.

Along with giant national corporations, we got giant national labor unions. And in the mid 20th century the corporations cut deals with the unions where they paid over market price for labor. Partly because the unions were monopolies. [10] Partly because, as components of oligopolies themselves, the corporations knew they could safely pass the cost on to their customers, because their competitors would have to as well. And partly because in mid-century most of the giant companies were still focused on finding new ways to milk economies of scale. Just as startups rightly pay AWS a premium over the cost of running their own servers so they can focus on growth, many of the big national corporations were willing to pay a premium for labor. [11]

As well as pushing incomes up from the bottom, by overpaying unions, the big companies of the 20th century also pushed incomes down at the top, by underpaying their top management. Economist J. K. Galbraith wrote in 1967 that “There are few corporations in which it would be suggested that executive salaries are at a maximum.” [12]

Speaking Out Meant Standing Alone

To some extent this was an illusion.

Much of the de facto pay of executives never showed up on their income tax returns, because it took the form of perks. The higher the rate of income tax, the more pressure there was to pay employees upstream of it. (In the UK, where taxes were even higher than in the US, companies would even pay their kids’ private school tuitions.) One of the most valuable things the big companies of the mid 20th century gave their employees was job security, and this too didn’t show up in tax returns or income statistics. So the nature of employment in these organizations tended to yield falsely low numbers about economic inequality. But even accounting for that, the big companies paid their best people less than market price. There was no market; the expectation was that you’d work for the same company for decades if not your whole career. [13]

Your work was so illiquid there was little chance of getting market price. But that same illiquidity also encouraged you not to seek it. If the company promised to employ you till you retired and give you a pension afterward, you didn’t want to extract as much from it this year as you could. You needed to take care of the company so it could take care of you. Especially when you’d been working with the same group of people for decades. If you tried to squeeze the company for more money, you were squeezing the organization that was going to take care of them. Plus if you didn’t put the company first you wouldn’t be promoted, and if you couldn’t switch ladders, promotion on this one was the only way up. [14]

To someone who’d spent several formative years in the armed forces, this situation didn’t seem as strange as it does to us now. From their point of view, as big company executives, they were high-ranking officers. They got paid a lot more than privates. They got to have expense account lunches at the best restaurants and fly around on the company’s Gulfstreams. It probably didn’t occur to most of them to ask if they were being paid market price.

The ultimate way to get market price is to work for yourself, by starting your own company. That seems obvious to any ambitious person now. But in the mid 20th century it was an alien concept. Not because starting one’s own company seemed too ambitious, but because it didn’t seem ambitious enough. Even as late as the 1970s, when I grew up, the ambitious plan was to get lots of education at prestigious institutions, and then join some other prestigious institution and work one’s way up the hierarchy. Your prestige was the prestige of the institution you belonged to. People did start their own businesses of course, but educated people rarely did, because in those days there was practically zero concept of starting what we now call a startup: a business that starts small and grows big. That was much harder to do in the mid 20th century. Starting one’s own business meant starting a business that would start small and stay small. Which in those days of big companies often meant scurrying around trying to avoid being trampled by elephants. It was more prestigious to be one of the executive class riding the elephant.

By the 1970s, no one stopped to wonder where the big prestigious companies had come from in the first place.

Famous 1970s Logos: The Best 70s Logo Design Examples

It seemed like they’d always been there, like the chemical elements. And indeed, there was a double wall between ambitious kids in the 20th century and the origins of the big companies. Many of the big companies were roll-ups that didn’t have clear founders. And when they did, the founders didn’t seem like us. Nearly all of them had been uneducated, in the sense of not having been to college. They were what Shakespeare called rude mechanicals. College trained one to be a member of the professional classes. Its graduates didn’t expect to do the sort of grubby menial work that Andrew Carnegie or Henry Ford started out doing. [15]

And in the 20th century there were more and more college graduates. They increased from about 2% of the population in 1900 to about 25% in 2000. In the middle of the century our two big forces intersect, in the form of the GI Bill, which sent 2.2 million World War II veterans to college. Few thought of it in these terms, but the result of making college the canonical path for the ambitious was a world in which it was socially acceptable to work for Henry Ford, but not to be Henry Ford. [16]

I remember this world well. I came of age just as it was starting to break up. In my childhood it was still dominant. Not quite so dominant as it had been. We could see from old TV shows and yearbooks and the way adults acted that people in the 1950s and 60s had been even more conformist than us. The mid-century model was already starting to get old. But that was not how we saw it at the time. We would at most have said that one could be a bit more daring in 1975 than 1965. And indeed, things hadn’t changed much yet.

But change was coming soon.

And when the Duplo economy started to disintegrate, it disintegrated in several different ways at once. Vertically integrated companies literally dis-integrated because it was more efficient to. Incumbents faced new competitors as (a) markets went global and (b) technical innovation started to trump economies of scale, turning size from an asset into a liability. Smaller companies were increasingly able to survive as formerly narrow channels to consumers broadened. Markets themselves started to change faster, as whole new categories of products appeared. And last but not least, the federal government, which had previously smiled upon J. P. Morgan’s world as the natural state of things, began to realize it wasn’t the last word after all.

What J. P. Morgan was to the horizontal axis, Henry Ford was to the vertical. He wanted to do everything himself. The giant plant he built at River Rouge between 1917 and 1928 literally took in iron ore at one end and sent cars out the other. 100,000 people worked there. At the time it seemed the future. But that is not how car companies operate today. Now much of the design and manufacturing happens in a long supply chain, whose products the car companies ultimately assemble and sell. The reason car companies operate this way is that it works better. Each company in the supply chain focuses on what they know best. And they each have to do it well or they can be swapped out for another supplier.

Why didn’t Henry Ford realize that networks of cooperating companies work better than a single big company?

One reason is that supplier networks take a while to evolve. In 1917, doing everything himself seemed to Ford the only way to get the scale he needed. And the second reason is that if you want to solve a problem using a network of cooperating companies, you have to be able to coordinate their efforts, and you can do that much better with computers. Computers reduce the transaction costs that Coase argued are the raison d’etre of corporations. That is a fundamental change.

In the early 20th century, big companies were synonymous with efficiency. In the late 20th century they were synonymous with inefficiency. To some extent this was because the companies themselves had become sclerotic. But it was also because our standards were higher.

It wasn’t just within existing industries that change occurred. The industries themselves changed. It became possible to make lots of new things, and sometimes the existing companies weren’t the ones who did it best.

Microcomputers are a classic example.

Ms Dos 1.25 (1982)(Microsoft) Game

The market was pioneered by upstarts like Apple, Radio Shack and Atari. When it got big enough, IBM decided it was worth paying attention to. At the time IBM completely dominated the computer industry. They assumed that all they had to do, now that this market was ripe, was to reach out and pick it. Most people at the time would have agreed with them. But what happened next illustrated how much more complicated the world had become. IBM did launch a microcomputer. Though quite successful, it did not crush Apple. But even more importantly, IBM itself ended up being supplanted by a supplier coming in from the side—from software, which didn’t even seem to be the same business. IBM’s big mistake was to accept a non-exclusive license for DOS. It must have seemed a safe move at the time. No other computer manufacturer had ever been able to outsell them. What difference did it make if other manufacturers could offer DOS too? The result of that miscalculation was an explosion of inexpensive PC clones. Microsoft now owned the PC standard, and the customer. And the microcomputer business ended up being Apple vs Microsoft.

Basically, Apple bumped IBM and then Microsoft stole its wallet. That sort of thing did not happen to big companies in mid-century. But it was going to happen increasingly often in the future.

Change happened mostly by itself in the computer business. In other industries, legal obstacles had to be removed first. Many of the mid-century oligopolies had been anointed by the federal government with policies (and in wartime, large orders) that kept out competitors. This didn’t seem as dubious to government officials at the time as it sounds to us. They felt a two-party system ensured sufficient competition in politics. It ought to work for business too.

Gradually the government realized that anti-competitive policies were doing more harm than good, and during the Carter administration started to remove them.

The word used for this process was misleadingly narrow: deregulation. What was really happening was de-oligopolization. It happened to one industry after another. Two of the most visible to consumers were air travel and long-distance phone service, which both became dramatically cheaper after deregulation.

Deregulation also contributed to the wave of hostile takeovers in the 1980s. In the old days the only limit on the inefficiency of companies, short of actual bankruptcy, was the inefficiency of their competitors. Now companies had to face absolute rather than relative standards. Any public company that didn’t generate sufficient returns on its assets risked having its management replaced with one that would. Often the new managers did this by breaking companies up into components that were more valuable separately. [17]

Version 1 of the national economy consisted of a few big blocks whose relationships were negotiated in back rooms by a handful of executives, politicians, regulators, and labor leaders. Version 2 was higher resolution: there were more companies, of more different sizes, making more different things, and their relationships changed faster. In this world there were still plenty of back room negotiations, but more was left to market forces. Which further accelerated the fragmentation.

It’s a little misleading to talk of versions when describing a gradual process, but not as misleading as it might seem. There was a lot of change in a few decades, and what we ended up with was qualitatively different. The companies in the S&P 500 in 1958 had been there an average of 61 years. By 2012 that number was 18 years. [18]

The breakup of the Duplo economy happened simultaneously with the spread of computing power. To what extent were computers a precondition? It would take a book to answer that. Obviously the spread of computing power was a precondition for the rise of startups. I suspect it was for most of what happened in finance too. But was it a precondition for globalization or the LBO wave? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t discount the possibility. It may be that the refragmentation was driven by computers in the way the industrial revolution was driven by steam engines. Whether or not computers were a precondition, they have certainly accelerated it.

The new fluidity of companies changed people’s relationships with their employers. Why climb a corporate ladder that might be yanked out from under you? Ambitious people started to think of a career less as climbing a single ladder than as a series of jobs that might be at different companies. More movement (or even potential movement) between companies introduced more competition in salaries. Plus as companies became smaller it became easier to estimate how much an employee contributed to the company’s revenue. Both changes drove salaries toward market price. And since people vary dramatically in productivity, paying market price meant salaries started to diverge.

By no coincidence it was in the early 1980s that the term “yuppie” was coined. That word is not much used now, because the phenomenon it describes is so taken for granted, but at the time it was a label for something novel. Yuppies were young professionals who made lots of money. To someone in their twenties today, this wouldn’t seem worth naming. Why wouldn’t young professionals make lots of money? But until the 1980s being underpaid early in your career was part of what it meant to be a professional. Young professionals were paying their dues, working their way up the ladder. The rewards would come later. What was novel about yuppies was that they wanted market price for the work they were doing now.

The first yuppies did not work for startups.

AM2407 Spark blog: 1980s - The Yuppie

That was still in the future. Nor did they work for big companies. They were professionals working in fields like law, finance, and consulting. But their example rapidly inspired their peers. Once they saw that new BMW 325i, they wanted one too.

Underpaying people at the beginning of their career only works if everyone does it. Once some employer breaks ranks, everyone else has to, or they can’t get good people. And once started this process spreads through the whole economy, because at the beginnings of people’s careers they can easily switch not merely employers but industries.

But not all young professionals benefitted. You had to produce to get paid a lot. It was no coincidence that the first yuppies worked in fields where it was easy to measure that.

More generally, an idea was returning whose name sounds old-fashioned precisely because it was so rare for so long: that you could make your fortune. As in the past there were multiple ways to do it. Some made their fortunes by creating wealth, and others by playing zero-sum games. But once it became possible to make one’s fortune, the ambitious had to decide whether or not to. A physicist who chose physics over Wall Street in 1990 was making a sacrifice that a physicist in 1960 wasn’t.

The idea even flowed back into big companies. CEOs of big companies make more now than they used to, and I think much of the reason is prestige. In 1960, corporate CEOs had immense prestige. They were the winners of the only economic game in town. But if they made as little now as they did then, in real dollar terms, they’d seem like small fry compared to professional athletes and whiz kids making millions from startups and hedge funds. They don’t like that idea, so now they try to get as much as they can, which is more than they had been getting. [19]

Meanwhile a similar fragmentation was happening at the other end of the economic scale. As big companies’ oligopolies became less secure, they were less able to pass costs on to customers and thus less willing to overpay for labor. And as the Duplo world of a few big blocks fragmented into many companies of different sizes—some of them overseas—it became harder for unions to enforce their monopolies. As a result workers’ wages also tended toward market price. Which (inevitably, if unions had been doing their job) tended to be lower. Perhaps dramatically so, if automation had decreased the need for some kind of work.

And just as the mid-century model induced social as well as economic cohesion, its breakup brought social as well as economic fragmentation. People started to dress and act differently. Those who would later be called the “creative class” became more mobile. People who didn’t care much for religion felt less pressure to go to church for appearances’ sake, while those who liked it a lot opted for increasingly colorful forms. Some switched from meat loaf to tofu, and others to Hot Pockets. Some switched from driving Ford sedans to driving small imported cars, and others to driving SUVs. Kids who went to private schools or wished they did started to dress “preppy,” and kids who wanted to seem rebellious made a conscious effort to look disreputable. In a hundred ways people spread apart. [20]

Almost four decades later, fragmentation is still increasing.

Has it been net good or bad? I don’t know; the question may be unanswerable. Not entirely bad though. We take for granted the forms of fragmentation we like, and worry only about the ones we don’t. But as someone who caught the tail end of mid-century conformism, I can tell you it was no utopia. [21]

My goal here is not to say whether fragmentation has been good or bad, just to explain why it’s happening. With the centripetal forces of total war and 20th century oligopoly mostly gone, what will happen next? And more specifically, is it possible to reverse some of the fragmentation we’ve seen?

If it is, it will have to happen piecemeal. You can’t reproduce mid-century cohesion the way it was originally produced. It would be insane to go to war just to induce more national unity. And once you understand the degree to which the economic history of the 20th century was a low-res version 1, it’s clear you can’t reproduce that either.

20th century cohesion was something that happened at least in a sense naturally. The war was due mostly to external forces, and the Duplo economy was an evolutionary phase. If you want cohesion now, you’d have to induce it deliberately. And it’s not obvious how. I suspect the best we’ll be able to do is address the symptoms of fragmentation. But that may be enough.

The form of fragmentation people worry most about lately is economic inequality, and if you want to eliminate that you’re up against a truly formidable headwind—one that has been in operation since the stone age: technology. Technology is a lever. It magnifies work. And the lever not only grows increasingly long, but the rate at which it grows is itself increasing.

Which in turn means the variation in the amount of wealth people can create has not only been increasing, but accelerating.

The unusual conditions that prevailed in the mid 20th century masked this underlying trend. The ambitious had little choice but to join large organizations that made them march in step with lots of other people—literally in the case of the armed forces, figuratively in the case of big corporations. Even if the big corporations had wanted to pay people proportionate to their value, they couldn’t have figured out how. But that constraint has gone now. Ever since it started to erode in the 1970s, we’ve seen the underlying forces at work again. [22]

Not everyone who gets rich now does it by creating wealth, certainly. But a significant number do, and the Baumol Effect means all their peers get dragged along too. [23] And as long as it’s possible to get rich by creating wealth, the default tendency will be for economic inequality to increase. Even if you eliminate all the other ways to get rich. You can mitigate this with subsidies at the bottom and taxes at the top, but unless taxes are high enough to discourage people from creating wealth, you’re always going to be fighting a losing battle against increasing variation in productivity. [24]

That form of fragmentation, like the others, is here to stay. Or rather, back to stay. Nothing is forever, but the tendency toward fragmentation should be more forever than most things, precisely because it’s not due to any particular cause. It’s simply a reversion to the mean. When Rockefeller said individualism was gone, he was right for a hundred years. It’s back now, and that’s likely to be true for longer.

I worry that if we don’t acknowledge this, we’re headed for trouble.

If we think 20th century cohesion disappeared because of few policy tweaks, we’ll be deluded into thinking we can get it back (minus the bad parts, somehow) with a few countertweaks. And then we’ll waste our time trying to eliminate fragmentation, when we’d be better off thinking about how to mitigate its consequences.

Notes

[1] Lester Thurow, writing in 1975, said the wage differentials prevailing at the end of World War II had become so embedded that they “were regarded as ‘just’ even after the egalitarian pressures of World War II had disappeared. Basically, the same differentials exist to this day, thirty years later.” But Goldin and Margo think market forces in the postwar period also helped preserve the wartime compression of wages—specifically increased demand for unskilled workers, and oversupply of educated ones.

(Oddly enough, the American custom of having employers pay for health insurance derives from efforts by businesses to circumvent NWLB wage controls in order to attract workers.)

[2] As always, tax rates don’t tell the whole story. There were lots of exemptions, especially for individuals. And in World War II the tax codes were so new that the government had little acquired immunity to tax avoidance. If the rich paid high taxes during the war it was more because they wanted to than because they had to.

After the war, federal tax receipts as a percentage of GDP were about the same as they are now.

In fact, for the entire period since the war, tax receipts have stayed close to 18% of GDP, despite dramatic changes in tax rates. The lowest point occurred when marginal income tax rates were highest: 14.1% in 1950. Looking at the data, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that tax rates have had little effect on what people actually paid.

[3] Though in fact the decade preceding the war had been a time of unprecedented federal power, in response to the Depression. Which is not entirely a coincidence, because the Depression was one of the causes of the war. In many ways the New Deal was a sort of dress rehearsal for the measures the federal government took during wartime. The wartime versions were much more drastic and more pervasive though. As Anthony Badger wrote, “for many Americans the decisive change in their experiences came not with the New Deal but with World War II.”

[4] I don’t know enough about the origins of the world wars to say, but it’s not inconceivable they were connected to the rise of big corporations. If that were the case, 20th century cohesion would have a single cause.

[5] More precisely, there was a bimodal economy consisting, in Galbraith’s words, of “the world of the technically dynamic, massively capitalized and highly organized corporations on the one hand and the hundreds of thousands of small and traditional proprietors on the other.” Money, prestige, and power were concentrated in the former, and there was near zero crossover.

[6] I wonder how much of the decline in families eating together was due to the decline in families watching TV together afterward.

[7] I know when this happened because it was the season Dallas premiered. Everyone else was talking about what was happening on Dallas, and I had no idea what they meant.

[8] I didn’t realize it till I started doing research for this essay, but the meretriciousness of the products I grew up with is a well-known byproduct of oligopoly. When companies can’t compete on price, they compete on tailfins.

[9] Monroeville Mall was at the time of its completion in 1969 the largest in the country. In the late 1970s the movie Dawn of the Dead was shot there. Apparently the mall was not just the location of the movie, but its inspiration; the crowds of shoppers drifting through this huge mall reminded George Romero of zombies. My first job was scooping ice cream in the Baskin-Robbins.

[10] Labor unions were exempted from antitrust laws by the Clayton Antitrust Act in 1914 on the grounds that a person’s work is not “a commodity or article of commerce.” I wonder if that means service companies are also exempt.

[11] The relationships between unions and unionized companies can even be symbiotic, because unions will exert political pressure to protect their hosts. According to Michael Lind, when politicians tried to attack the A&P supermarket chain because it was putting local grocery stores out of business, “A&P successfully defended itself by allowing the unionization of its workforce in 1938, thereby gaining organized labor as a constituency.” I’ve seen this phenomenon myself: hotel unions are responsible for more of the political pressure against Airbnb than hotel companies.

[12] Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives would work so hard to make money for other people (the shareholders) instead of themselves. He devoted much of The New Industrial State to trying to figure this out.

His theory was that professionalism had replaced money as a motive, and that modern corporate executives were, like (good) scientists, motivated less by financial rewards than by the desire to do good work and thereby earn the respect of their peers. There is something in this, though I think lack of movement between companies combined with self-interest explains much of observed behavior.

[13] Galbraith (p. 94) says a 1952 study of the 800 highest paid executives at 300 big corporations found that three quarters of them had been with their company for more than 20 years.

[14] It seems likely that in the first third of the 20th century executive salaries were low partly because companies then were more dependent on banks, who would have disapproved if executives got too much. This was certainly true in the beginning. The first big company CEOs were J. P. Morgan’s hired hands.

Companies didn’t start to finance themselves with retained earnings till the 1920s. Till then they had to pay out their earnings in dividends, and so depended on banks for capital for expansion. Bankers continued to sit on corporate boards till the Glass-Steagall act in 1933.

By mid-century big companies funded 3/4 of their growth from earnings. But the early years of bank dependence, reinforced by the financial controls of World War II, must have had a big effect on social conventions about executive salaries. So it may be that the lack of movement between companies was as much the effect of low salaries as the cause.

Incidentally, the switch in the 1920s to financing growth with retained earnings was one cause of the 1929 crash. The banks now had to find someone else to lend to, so they made more margin loans.

[15] Even now it’s hard to get them to. One of the things I find hardest to get into the heads of would-be startup founders is how important it is to do certain kinds of menial work early in the life of a company. Doing things that don’t scale is to how Henry Ford got started as a high-fiber diet is to the traditional peasant’s diet: they had no choice but to do the right thing, while we have to make a conscious effort.

[16] Founders weren’t celebrated in the press when I was a kid. “Our founder” meant a photograph of a severe-looking man with a walrus mustache and a wing collar who had died decades ago. The thing to be when I was a kid was an executive. If you weren’t around then it’s hard to grasp the cachet that term had. The fancy version of everything was called the “executive” model.

[17] The wave of hostile takeovers in the 1980s was enabled by a combination of circumstances: court decisions striking down state anti-takeover laws, starting with the Supreme Court’s 1982 decision in Edgar v. MITE Corp.; the Reagan administration’s comparatively sympathetic attitude toward takeovers; the Depository Institutions Act of 1982, which allowed banks and savings and loans to buy corporate bonds; a new SEC rule issued in 1982 (rule 415) that made it possible to bring corporate bonds to market faster; the creation of the junk bond business by Michael Milken; a vogue for conglomerates in the preceding period that caused many companies to be combined that never should have been; a decade of inflation that left many public companies trading below the value of their assets; and not least, the increasing complacency of managements.

[18] Foster, Richard. “Creative Destruction Whips through Corporate America.” Innosight, February 2012.

[19] CEOs of big companies may be overpaid. I don’t know enough about big companies to say. But it is certainly not impossible for a CEO to make 200x as much difference to a company’s revenues as the average employee. Look at what Steve Jobs did for Apple when he came back as CEO. It would have been a good deal for the board to give him 95% of the company. Apple’s market cap the day Steve came back in July 1997 was 1.73 billion. 5% of Apple now (January 2016) would be worth about 30 billion. And it would not be if Steve hadn’t come back; Apple probably wouldn’t even exist anymore.

Merely including Steve in the sample might be enough to answer the question of whether public company CEOs in the aggregate are overpaid. And that is not as facile a trick as it might seem, because the broader your holdings, the more the aggregate is what you care about.

[20] The late 1960s were famous for social upheaval. But that was more rebellion (which can happen in any era if people are provoked sufficiently) than fragmentation. You’re not seeing fragmentation unless you see people breaking off to both left and right.

[21] Globally the trend has been in the other direction. While the US is becoming more fragmented, the world as a whole is becoming less fragmented, and mostly in good ways.

[22] There were a handful of ways to make a fortune in the mid 20th century. The main one was drilling for oil, which was open to newcomers because it was not something big companies could dominate through economies of scale. How did individuals accumulate large fortunes in an era of such high taxes? Giant tax loopholes defended by two of the most powerful men in Congress, Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson.

But becoming a Texas oilman was not in 1950 something one could aspire to the way starting a startup or going to work on Wall Street were in 2000, because (a) there was a strong local component and (b) success depended so much on luck.

[23] The Baumol Effect induced by startups is very visible in Silicon Valley. Google will pay people millions of dollars a year to keep them from leaving to start or join startups.

[24] I’m not claiming variation in productivity is the only cause of economic inequality in the US. But it’s a significant cause, and it will become as big a cause as it needs to, in the sense that if you ban other ways to get rich, people who want to get rich will use this route instead.

Thanks to Sam Altman, Trevor Blackwell, Paul Buchheit, Patrick Collison, Ron Conway, Chris Dixon, Benedict Evans, Richard Florida, Ben Horowitz, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, Tim O’Reilly, Geoff Ralston, Max Roser, Alexia Tsotsis, and Qasar Younis for reading drafts of this. Max also told me about several valuable sources. Essay from http://paulgraham.com/re.html

Bibliography

Allen, Frederick Lewis. The Big Change. Harper, 1952.

Averitt, Robert. The Dual Economy. Norton, 1968.

Badger, Anthony. The New Deal. Hill and Wang, 1989.

Bainbridge, John. The Super-Americans. Doubleday, 1961.

Beatty, Jack. Collossus. Broadway, 2001.

Brinkley, Douglas. Wheels for the World. Viking, 2003.

Brownleee, W. Elliot. Federal Taxation in America. Cambridge, 1996.

Chandler, Alfred. The Visible Hand. Harvard, 1977.

Chernow, Ron. The House of Morgan. Simon & Schuster, 1990.

Chernow, Ron. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller. Random House, 1998.

Galbraith, John. The New Industrial State. Houghton Mifflin, 1967.

Goldin, Claudia and Robert A. Margo. “The Great Compression: The Wage Structure in the United States at Mid-Century.” NBER Working Paper 3817, 1991.

Gordon, John. An Empire of Wealth. HarperCollins, 2004.

Klein, Maury. The Genesis of Industrial America, 1870-1920. Cambridge, 2007.

Lind, Michael. Land of Promise. HarperCollins, 2012.

Mickelthwaite, John, and Adrian Wooldridge. The Company. Modern Library, 2003.

Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. Penguin, 2006.

Sobel, Robert. The Age of Giant Corporations. Praeger, 1993.

Thurow, Lester. Generating Inequality: Mechanisms of Distribution. Basic Books, 1975.

Witte, John. The Politics and Development of the Federal Income Tax. Wisconsin, 1985.

 

FBI- Trump Shooter Was Lone Gunman

Today, the aftermath of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump: a breakdown of the assassination attempt, and initial theories about the gunman. Via our friends at the Associated Press & The Epoch Times.

Highlights

A Breakdown of the Assassination Attempt Against Trump


It started at 6:02 p.m. with former President Donald Trump taking the stage in Butler, Pennsylvania. Ten minutes later Mr. Trump was lying bleeding on the stage and shielded by Secret Service agents.


Why It Matters: An attempted political assassination of a former and potential U.S. president impacts the world.


FBI Found ‘Suspicious Device’ in Shooter’s Car, Investigating Attack as Domestic Terrorism


The FBI has provided background on its investigation of the would-be killer of former President Trump and what else he may have been trying to do.
Officials said they don’t have a motive yet, but did find a suspicious device in the dead gunman’s car and continue to work with his family as the investigation continues.


Why It Matters: Many questions need to be answered, including what the shooter’s motive was, and how he was able to nearly kill a former president.

FBI Investigating Attack as Act of Domestic Terrorism

The FBI said a ’suspicious device,’ which was later defused, was found in the assailant’s car.

FBI Believes Trump Shooter Acted Alone, Investigating Attack as Act of Domestic Terrorism
State and local police block off roads surrounding the home of the suspected shooter of former President Donald Trump, as the FBI carries out an investigation, in Bethel Park, Pa., on July 14, 2024. (Rebecca Droke/AFP via Getty Images) Joseph Lord

FBI officials say they believe the would-be assassin of former President Donald Trump acted alone.

The agency is investigating the attack as both an attempted assassination and an act of domestic terrorism, officials told reporters in a call with news media on July 14.

The new details emerged less than 24 hours after the United States saw its first major assassination attempt of a president or presidential candidate since President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981.

Authorities have identified the shooter as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, a resident of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. At a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, the assailant fired several shots from an elevated position near the venue. Witnesses saw a man with a rifle on the rooftop of a nearby building.

Former President Trump’s right ear was pierced by one of the bullets before he was rushed to his car by Secret Service agents. However, one of the attendees at the rally, 50-year-old firefighter Corey Comperatore, was killed. Two other rally attendees—identified by Pennsylvania State Police as David Dutch and James Copenhaver—were injured.

Both of the injured attendees are in stable condition, according to Pennsylvania State Police, which did not provide further details on their injuries. A GoFundMe effort established by the Trump campaign for the victims and their families had raised more than $3 million usd/ $4,090,000 cad as of the evening of July 14.

FBI Investigation

The FBI has not yet identified a motive. The assailant’s family is cooperating in the investigation, officials said.

Trump Says God ‘Prevented the Unthinkable’ During Assassination Attempt

Biden Says He’s Directed an Independent Review of Security at Trump Rally

Biden Says He’s Directed an Independent Review of Security at Trump Rally

Attorney General Merrick Garland called the assassination attempt on the former president “an attack on our democracy itself.”

“[The Justice Department has] no tolerance for such violence, and as Americans, we must have no tolerance for it,” Mr. Garland told reporters. “This must stop.”

The agency said a “suspicious device” was located during a sweep of Mr. Crooks’s car. It was later defused by bomb technicians.

FBI Director Christopher Wray vowed that his agency would “leave no stone unturned” in its investigation of the attack.

“An attempt to assassinate a presidential candidate can only be described as absolutely despicable and will not be tolerated in this country,” Mr. Wray told reporters.

Earlier on July 14, President Joe Biden said he asked that the investigation be “thorough and swift.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies about the bureau’s budgetary needs during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing in Washington on June 4, 2024. (Allison Bailey/Middle East Images via AFP via Getty Images)
FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies about the bureau’s budgetary needs during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing in Washington on June 4, 2024. (Allison Bailey/Middle East Images via AFP via Getty Images)

Prior to the attack, officials said, the perpetrator wasn’t on the FBI’s radar as a potential threat.

The FBI’s screening of the shooter’s social media presence has so far revealed no ideology or political beliefs that could have been his basis for the attack, officials said.

The FBI has received more than 2,000 tips so far, they said.

Officials believe that the rifle used in the attack was a semi-automatic rifle similar to an AR-15.

Kevin Rojek, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh Field Office, told reporters that the weapon belonged to the shooter’s father, who purchased it legally. It’s still unclear how Mr. Crooks got his hands on the rifle, or if his father was aware that he had taken it.

“These are facts that we’ll flesh out as we conduct interviews,” Mr. Rojek said.

Independent Review

President Biden said that he has directed an independent review of the security present at the rally.

Speaking from the White House, President Biden said the assassination attempt was “contrary to everything we stand for as a nation.”

“It’s not who we are as a nation, it’s not America, and we cannot allow this to happen,” he said.

The president said that he had a “short but good conversation” with former President Trump on the evening of July 13.

The former president, meanwhile, was due to arrive in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention on July 14, as originally planned. He said in a social media post that he had wanted to delay the travel in the immediate aftermath of the attack, but ultimately decided against it.

Secret Service officials confirmed on July 14 that no changes have been made to security at the convention, which starts on July 15, noting that the event has already been given the highest-grade security.

“Currently, there are no known articulated threats against the RNC or anyone visiting the RNC,” Michael Hensle, special agent in charge of the FBI for Wisconsin, said at a news conference.

The Secret Service has refuted claims that the 45th president’s security team requested additional security for the July 13 event and was denied.

“This is absolutely false. In fact, we added protective resources & technology & capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi wrote in a July 14 post on X.

Former President Trump, in a statement on July 14, thanked his supporters, saying of the attack that it was “God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.”

The former president made a call for unity, saying, “In this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand United, and show our True Character as Americans.”

Former First Lady Melania Trump, in her own statement, called on Americans to “ascend above the hate” and “simple-minded ideas that incite violence.”

“When I watched that violent bullet strike my husband, Donald, I realized my life, and Barron’s life, were on the brink of devastating change,” Ms. Trump wrote.

She said that she was “grateful to the brave Secret Service agents and law enforcement officials who risked their own lives.”

Over on Capitol Hill, lawmakers are vowing their own investigations into the matter.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Congress will probe if there were security lapses at the rally.

“We need to know: How could an individual be at that elevation that was seen by apparently bystanders on the ground—how could that not be noticed by Secret Service?” Mr. Johnson told NBC’s “Today” on July 14.

In a July 14 letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) revealed several pieces of information, including the security plan that was in place on the day of the shooting. The Secret Service falls under the umbrella of DHS.

A DHS spokesperson confirmed receipt of the letter.

“DHS responds to congressional inquiries directly via official channels, and the Department will continue to respond appropriately to Congressional oversight,” the spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email. For the Silo, Joseph Lord.

Joseph Lord

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

World Economic Forum- Why Experts Expect Global Growth

82% of chief economists expect the global economy to remain stable or strengthen this year – almost twice as many as in late 2023
Over two-thirds predict a sustained rebound of global growth, driven by technological transformation, artificial intelligence and the green transition.
There is near-unanimity that geopolitics and domestic politics will drive economic volatility this year. Read the May 2024 Chief Economist Outlook here

Geneva, Switzerland,May 2024 – The latest Chief Economists Outlook released today presents a growing sense of cautious optimism about the global economy in 2024. More than eight in ten chief economists expect the global economy to either strengthen or remain stable this year – nearly double the proportion in the previous report. The share of those predicting a downturn in global conditions declined from 56% in January to 17%.
 
But geopolitical and domestic political tensions cloud the horizon. Some 97% of respondents anticipate that geopolitics will contribute to global economic volatility this year. A further 83% said domestic politics will be a source of volatility in 2024, a year when nearly half the world’s population is voting.
 
“The latest Chief Economists Outlook points to welcome but tentative signs of improvement in the global economic climate,” said Saadia Zahidi, Managing Director, World Economic Forum. “This underscores the increasingly complex landscape that leaders are navigating. There is an urgent need for policy-making that not only looks to revive the engines of the global economy but also seeks to put in place the foundations of more inclusive, sustainable and resilient growth.”
 
Regional variations
 
Growth expectations have improved, though unevenly, across the globe. The survey reveals a significant boost in the outlook for the United States, where nearly all chief economists (97%) now expect moderate to strong growth this year, up from 59% in January.
 
Asian economies also appear robust, with all respondents projecting at least moderate growth in the South Asia and East Asia and Pacific regions. Expectations for China are slightly less optimistic, with three-quarters expecting moderate growth and only 4% predicting strong growth this year.
 
By contrast, the outlook for Europe remains gloomy, with nearly 70% of economists predicting weak growth for the remainder of 2024. Other regions are expected to experience broadly moderate growth, with a slight improvement since the previous survey.



A challenging landscape for decision-makers
 
The latest survey highlights the escalating challenges confronting businesses and policy-makers. Tensions between political and economic dynamics will be a growing challenge for decision-makers this year, according to 86% of respondents, while 79% expect heightened complexity to weigh on decision-making.
 
Among the factors expected to affect corporate decision-making are the overall health of the global economy (cited by 100%), monetary policy (86%), financial markets (86%), labour market conditions (79%), geopolitics (86%) and domestic politics (71%). Notably, 73% of economists believe that companies’ growth objectives will drive decision-making, almost double the proportion that cited the role of companies’ environmental and social goals (37%).
 
Long-term prospects and priorities
 
Most chief economists are upbeat about the prospects for a sustained rebound in global growth, with nearly 70% expecting a return to 4% growth in the next five years (42% within three years). In high-income countries, they expect growth to be driven by technological transformation, artificial intelligence, and the green and energy transition. However, opinions are divided on the impact of these factors in low-income economies. There is greater consensus on the factors that will be a drag on growth, with geopolitics, domestic politics, debt levels, climate change and social polarization expected to dampen growth in both high- and low-income economies.



In terms of the policy levers most likely to foster growth in the next five years, the most important across the board are innovation, infrastructure development, monetary policy, and education and skills. Low-income economies are seen as having more to gain from interventions relating to institutions, social services and access to finance compared to high-income economies. There is a notable lack of consensus on the impact for growth of environmental and industrial policies.
 
About the Chief Economists Outlook Report
The Chief Economists Outlook builds on the latest policy development research as well as consultations and surveys with leading chief economists from both the public and private sectors, organized by the World Economic Forum’s Centre for the New Economy and Society. It aims to summarize the emerging contours of the current economic environment and identify priorities for further action by policy-makers and business leaders in response to the compounding shocks to the global economy. The survey featured in this briefing was conducted in April 2024.
 
The Chief Economists Outlook supports the World Economic Forum’s Future of Growth Initiative, a two-year campaign aimed at inspiring discussion and action on charting new pathways for economic growth and supporting policy-makers in balancing growth, innovation, inclusion, sustainability and resilience goals. Learn more about the Future of Growth Initiative here.
The World Economic Forum, committed to improving the state of the world, is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. (www.weforum.org).

New Historical Novel-The Boy With The Star Tattoo

From the award-winning Israeli-born author, activist, and acclaimed speaker (formerly worked at Redbook magazine) Talia Carner, comes THE BOY WITH THE STAR TATTOO, her new book which centers around an assistant to an Israeli naval officer stationed in Normandy, tracing orphan roots to the rescued French village from post-WWII.

When she identifies the mother, Sharon is unprepared for the shock of her discovery. Her historical novel THE BOY WITH THE STAR TATTOO was released by HarperCollins in February 2024.

Currently on her book tour, the epic historical novel weaves two yet-untold events set in France.

The first is set in 1946 in the aftermath of the Holocaust when agents from Eretz Israel roamed the European countryside to rescue hidden Jewish orphans (Youth Aliyah). The second is set in 1969, relating to the daring escape of the boats of Cherbourg, in Normandy, which were commissioned and paid for by Israel but whose delivery was blocked by a French arms embargo. Carner wrote the book after seeing a road sign leading to Cherbourg, which reminded her of the 1969 event.

In November 2023, Algemeiner magazine named Talia Carner as one of the Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life 2023.

Formerly the publisher of Savvy Woman magazine, Carner was a marketing consultant to Fortune 500 companies targeting the top of the pyramid of the women’s market.

Talia says, “The research on the social and political mood in France in that period and later, the Franco-Israel relationship, was exhaustive and included 30 interviews, five trips to France, and the use of drones during the pandemic.”

From worldwide violence against women and questions of contemporary Jewish identity to the plights of children, Talia Carner gives a voice to those without one. Talia says, “Of all the public dramatic events that Israel has executed, the Cherbourg Project is only second to the 1976 Entebbe Raid. The 1969 story of the Boats of Cherbourg has rarely been told—and never in fiction. The second story woven into the novel is that of Youth Aliyah, the rescue of Jewish orphans after WWII who were brought to then-Palestine, the first and only such project in human history. The novel offers a back-to-basic narrative about Israel in its earlier years. It is a poignant reminder of the courageous spirit of those who committed themselves to survival.”

From teaching business to women in Russia to participating in women’s economic forums in Beijing, Talia is engaged in the global realities of denying women their dignity and human rights including clitoridectomy, gendercide, sexual enslavement, and maternal mortality of child brides to the stoning of women, and the use of rape as a tool of war. Alternately, she demonstrates the growth of a society that opens its public arena to women—and how a community thrives when women are educated, participate, and lead.

More about the author 

Talia Carner’s heart-wrenching suspense novels, (published by HarperCollins) THE THIRD DAUGHTER, HOTEL MOSCOW, JERUSALEM MAIDEN, CHINA DOLL, and PUPPET CHILD, have been hailed for exposing society’s ills. She is a committed supporter of global human rights and has spearheaded projects centered on the subjects of female plight. A Toastmasters’ Gold Level speaker, she has participated as a panelist or keynoted over 500 events and 350 Zoom presentations to civic, religious, and cultural organizations. Talia Carner is a board member of HBI, the Jewish women’s research center at Brandeis University, and an honorary board member of several anti-domestic violence, child abuse intervention, and anti-sex-trafficking organizations.

Books:

PUPPET CHILD (2002) launched The Protective Parent Reform Act, which passed or is under consideration in two dozen states—and was the platform for two State Senatorial candidates. CHINA DOLL (2006,) became the platform for her presentation at the U.N. in 2007 about infanticide in China—the first ever in U.N. history.  JERUSALEM MAIDEN (2011,) won Forward National Literature Award in the historical fiction category. HOTEL MOSCOW, (HarperCollins, 2015) won USA Best Book Award in the “multicultural category.”

For The Silo, Kat Fleischman.

How Canada Can Help Repair Today’s Global Trading System

The article below (Furthering the Benefits of Global Economic Integration through
Institution Building: Canada as 2024 Chair of CPTPP) was first published by the C.D. Howe Institute by Paul Jenkins and Mark Kruger.

Introduction

Over the last 10 to 15 years, the global economy has become fragmented. There are many reasons for this fragmentation – both economic and geopolitical. A particularly important factor has been the inability of the institutions that provide the governance framework for international trade and finance to adapt to the changing realities of the global economy.

This erosion is reflected in the cycles of outcome-based measures of globalization, such as trade-to-GDP ratios. Research indicates that the development of institutions that promote global integration is highly correlated with more rapid economic growth. To secure the benefits of economic integration, the international community should re-commit to a set of common rules. This should involve the renewal of existing institutions in line with current economic realities.


But institutional renewal alone is not sufficient. Nurturing and growing new institutions are also critical, especially ones reflecting the realities of today’s global economy. Most promising in this regard is the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).


The CPTPP is seen as a “next generation” trade agreement. It takes World Trade Organization (WTO) rules further in several key areas, such as electronic commerce, intellectual property, and state-owned enterprises.
Expansion of CPTPP represents a unique opportunity to strengthen global trade rules, deepen global economic cooperation on trade and sustain an open global trading system. The benefits for Canada of an expanded CPTPP are further diversification of its export markets and deepened ties with countries in the Indo-Pacific region.

Trusted Policy Intelligence


The challenge to enabling broad-based accession to CPTPP is geopolitical, reflecting the rising aspirations of the developing world, the associated
heightened contest between democracy and autocracy, and the prioritization of security. Indeed, for many, today’s security concerns are at the forefront, trumping economic issues. We argue that recognition of the economic benefits
of global economic integration must also remain at the forefront, and that research presented in this paper shows that institutional building is at the core
of securing such benefits.


As 2024 Chair of the CPTPP Commission, Canada has an opportunity to play a leadership role, as it did in the creation of the Bretton Woods institutions 80 years ago, by again promoting global institution building, this time through the successful accession of countries to the CPTPP, both this year and over the long run.

  1. Cycles in Global Economic Integration
    Former US Fed Chair Bernanke points out that the process of global economic integration has been going on for centuries. New technologies have been a major force in linking economies and markets but the process has not been a smooth and steady one. Rather, there have been waves of integration, dis-integration, and re-integration.
    Before World War I, the global economy was connected by extensive international trade, investment, and financial flows. Improved transportation – steamships, railways and canals – and communication – international mail and the telegraph – facilitated this “first era of globalization.” The gold standard linked countries financially and promoted currency stability. Trade barriers were reduced by the adoption of standardized customs procedures and trade regulations. The movement of goods, capital, and people was relatively unrestricted.
    The outbreak of World War I frayed global economic ties and set the stage for a more fragmented interwar period. The Treaty of Versailles imposed
    punitive measures on Germany, exacerbating economic hardships. Protectionist policies, such as high tariffs and competitive devaluations, became widespread as countries prioritized domestic interests.
    The collapse of the gold standard further destabilized international finance. In contrast to the cooperation seen before the war, countries pursued economic nationalism and isolationism.
    Protectionism increased in the 1930s as a result of the dislocation caused by the Great Depression. In an attempt to shield domestic industries from foreign competition and address soaring unemployment, many countries imposed tariffs and trade barriers.
    The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in the United States exemplified this trend, triggering a series of beggar-thy-neighbour policies. These protectionist policies exacerbated the downturn and contributed to a contraction in international trade that worsened the severity and duration of the Great Depression.
    Mindful of the lessons of the 1930s, a more liberal economic order was established in the aftermath of World War II. The creation of the Bretton Woods Institutions – the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) – provided the principal mechanisms for managing and governing the global economy over the second half of the 20th century.
    Building on the GATT, the formation of the World Trade Organization in 1995 provided the institutional framework for overseeing international trade and settling disputes. China became the 143rd member of the WTO in 2001 and almost all global trade became subject to a common set of rules.
    The rise and fall of international economic governance are reflected in the cycles of outcome-based measures of globalization. Looking at trade openness, i.e., the sum of exports and imports as a percentage of GDP, the IMF divides the process of global integration into five periods: (i) the
    industrialization era, (ii) the interwar era, (iii) the Bretton Woods era, (iv) the liberalization era, and (v) “slowbalization” (Figure 1).
    Many factors have contributed to the plateauing of trade openness in the last 10 to 15 years. The fallout from the Global Financial Crisis was severe and the recovery was tepid. Brexit, with its inward-looking perspective, has disengaged the UK from Europe.
    Populist protectionism has led to “re-shoring” in an effort to address rising inequalities and labour’s falling share of national income. There has been far-reaching cyclical and structural fallout from COVID-19.
    And while the AI revolution portends significant opportunities, uncertainties over labour displacement abound.
    Geopolitics has also played a critical role. Security concerns have become more important, trumping economic issues in the eyes of many. This has led to multiple sanctions, along with export and investment controls, being imposed to protect national security interests.
    The IMF has carried out several modelling exercises that estimate the consequences of fragmentation if further trade and technology barriers were to be imposed. The studies employ a variety of assumptions regarding trade restrictions and technology de-coupling. In summary, the cost of further fragmentation ranges from 1.5 to 6.9 percent of global GDP. As with all modelling exercises, a degree of caution is warranted. At the same time, these studies should not be viewed as upper-bound estimates because they disregard many other transmission channels of global economic integration.
  2. De Jure and De Facto Globalization
    In assessing the evolution of globalization, however, it would be misleading to focus too narrowly on outcome-based measures such as the trade-to-GDP ratio depicted in Figure 1.
    The data compiled by KOF, a Swiss research institute, provide a more nuanced view of global economic integration. KOF constructs globalization
    indices that measure integration across economic, social, and political dimensions. Its globalization indices are among the most widely used in academic literature. KOF’s data set covers 203 countries over the period 1970 to 2021. Our focus here is on KOF’s economic indices.
    In terms of economic globalization, KOF looks at the evolution of finance as well as trade. Moreover, one of the unique aspects of KOF’s work is that it examines globalization on both de facto and de jure bases.
    KOF’s de facto globalization indices measure actual international flows and activities. In terms of trade, it includes cross-border goods and services flows and trading partner diversity. For financial globalization, its indices measure stocks of international assets and liabilities as well as cross-border payments and receipts.
    KOF’s de jure globalization indices try to capture the policies and conditions that, in principle, foster these flows and activities. For trade globalization,
    these include income from taxes on trade, non-tariff barriers, tariffs, and trade agreements. De jure financial globalization is designed to measure the institutional openness of a country to international financial flows and investments. Variables to measure capital account openness, investment restrictions and international agreements and treaties with investment provisions are included in these indices.
    The trends in KOF’s de facto and de jure economic globalization indices are shown in Figure 2. Both globalization measures increased rapidly from 1990
    until the Global Financial Crisis. Both measures subsequently plateaued. In 2020, as the global pandemic took hold, the de facto index plunged to its
    lowest level since 2011. In 2021, it recovered half of the distance it lost the previous year. The de jure index has essentially been flat for the last decade.
    There has been a sharp divergence between KOF’s de facto and de jure trade globalization measures in the last five years (Figure 3). By 2020, de facto trade globalization had dropped to a 25-year low. Although it recovered somewhat in 2021, it remains well below the average of the last decade. In contrast, de jure trade globalization levelled off after the Global Financial
    Crisis. It reached a modest new high in 2019 and has essentially remained there since then.
    The trends in financial globalization are almost the reverse of those of trade globalization. De facto financial globalization continued to increase through
    2020 and dipped slightly in 2021. De jure financial globalization has been essentially flat over the last two decades (Figure 4).
    The KOF researchers provide convincing econometric evidence that economic globalization supports per capita GDP growth. Importantly,
    their analysis shows that institutions matter. They demonstrate that the positive impact on growth from trade and financial globalization comes from
    institutional liberalization rather than greater economic flows. Through a series of panel regressions, the researchers show that it is the de jure trade and financial globalization indices that are correlated with more rapid per capita GDP growth. In contrast, there is no significant relationship between growth and the de facto indices.
    KOF’s conclusions are consistent with the work of Rodrik, Subramanian and Trebbi who examine the contributions of institutions, geography, and trade
    in determining relative income levels around the world. They find that institutional quality “trumps everything else.” Once institutions are controlled for, conventional measures of geography have weak effects on incomes and the contribution of trade is generally not significant.
    Thus, to recapture the economic benefits of free trade and open markets, countries need to recommit to finding ways to further de jure globalization; that is, putting in place the institutional building blocks in
    support of enhanced trade and financial integration.
  3. Geopolitical Realities
    Institutional reform, however, requires trust and mutual respect among partners. Many would argue that such trust and respect is in limited supply
    today, especially between the United States and China. The United States is willing to endure the costs of heightened protectionism to purportedly
    strengthen the resilience of its economy and secure greater political security. This has resulted in multiple sanctions, particularly in areas of digital technologies.
    In response, China, amongst other measures, has imposed export controls on critical minerals used in advanced technology in defence of its geopolitical goals.
    Yet, as discussed by Fareed Zakaria in a Foreign Affairs article, The Self-Doubting Superpower, China has become the second largest economy in the world richer and more powerful within an integrated global economic system; a system that if overturned would result in severely negative consequences for China.
    For the United States, its inherent strength has been its commitment to open markets and its vision of the world that has considered the interests of others. In many respects, it remains uniquely capable of playing the central role in sustaining the global economic system.
    Following a recent trip to China, Treasury Secretary Yellen stated that “the relationship between the United States and China is one of the most consequential of our time,” and that it “is possible to achieve an economic
    relationship that is mutually beneficial in the long-run – one that supports growth and innovation on both sides.”
    This means that the United States would need to accommodate China’s legitimate efforts to sustain a rising standard of living for its citizens, while
    deterring illegitimate ones. For China, it would mean a clear and abiding commitment to an open, rules-based global economic system.
    It appears that there is currently no clear path forward for this change in mindset, given what many see as insurmountable geopolitics in both the United States and China. Yet, history shows that achieving and sustaining long-term economic growth is in every country’s best interest, and that such growth is best secured through ongoing global economic integration.
  4. A Way Forward
    Recent discussions at the IMF’s Annual Meeting in Marrakech about IMF quota reform, including quota increases and realignment in quota shares to
    better reflect members’ relative positions in the global economy, are important signals of possible renewal.
    Similarly, calls to revamp the World Bank’s mandate, operational model, and ability to finance global public goods, such as climate transition, reflect a growing consensus that the Bretton Woods Institutions must change in the face of today’s realities.
    But institutional renewal alone is insufficient.
    Broad-based accession to the CPTPP represents a unique opportunity to strengthen global governance overall, and to address common challenges in ways that benefit both countries as well as the global economy.
    The CPTPP sets a high bar, requiring countries to:
  • eliminate or substantially reduce tariffs and other
    trade barriers;
  • make strong commitments to opening their markets;
  • abide by strict rules on competition, government
    procurement, state-owned enterprises, and
    protection of foreign companies; and
  • operate within, as well as help promote, a
    predictable, comprehensive framework in the critical
    area of digital trade flows.
    The United Kingdom formally agreed to join the
    CPTPP in July 2023. Once its Parliament ratifies
    the Agreement, the UK will join Australia, Brunei
    Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico,
    New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam in the
    trading block.
    Such a diverse membership clearly demonstrates
    that countries do not have to be geographically close
    to form an effective trading block.
    A half-dozen other countries have also applied
    to join the CPTPP, with China’s application having
    been the earliest received.
    Petri and Plummer estimate that joining the
    CPTPP would yield large economic benefits for
    China and the global economy. For the latter, the
    boost to global GDP would be in the order of $600
    billion annually. The United States in joining would
    gain preferential access to rapidly growing Pacific Rim
    markets. Much of the additional market access would
    come from China’s opening of its service sector.
    Industrial policy and state-owned enterprises,
    however, will continue to play a much larger role
    in China than they do in Western economies. The
    key for China is to demonstrate that a socialist
    market economy (i.e., one that has a mixed capitalist
    market and government-controlled economy) can be
    consistent with fair trade.
    The process of China joining the CPTPP will
    undoubtedly be time-consuming. It took 15 years of
    negotiations before China joined the WTO in 2001.
    This was five more years, on average, than it took
    those countries that joined after 1995.
    The challenge for Canada, and subsequent chairs,
    is to ensure that China’s entry maintains the high
    standards CPTPP members have met so far.
    Broad based accession to the CPTPP, including
    the United States and China, however, is best viewed
    Page 8 Verbatim
    Trusted Policy Intelligence
    as a long-term goal. China would need to undertake
    unprecedented reforms, involving complex political
    challenges, including Taiwan’s potential accession. For
    its part, the United States would need to step well
    back from its current mercantilist mind set, which
    risks worsening.

Canada as Chair in 2024

While efforts to renew existing global institutions to better reflect current economic realities are important, we see promoting broad accession to the CPTPP as the best means to turn today’s global economic fragmentation around.
At the heart of the global economic system is the open trading framework put in place at Bretton Woods in 1944. Many would see today’s fragmentation as becoming more acute, rather than getting better, due to geopolitical divisions.
But further fragmentation is no way to save the open, rules-based global trading system that has served so many countries so well for so long.


While restrictions reflecting legitimate security concerns are inevitable, an open, competitive trading system remains in the best interests of all countries.
As 2024 Chair of the CPTPP Commission, Canada has an opportunity to contribute to turning around the fragmentation of today’s global trading system and moving the global economy back along a path towards a
more open, rules-based trading system.


An important goal for Canada’s chairmanship would be to clarify the rules of accession. This would be a big step forward in sustaining expansion of CPTPP. While today’s geopolitical realities surrounding the applications of both China and Taiwan represent a particularly challenging area to advance, significant progress in other areas must be made. It should accelerate inclusion of Costa Rica, Uruguay, Ecuador, and Ukraine, all of whom have applied. And it should help move forward discussions with South Korea, Indonesia, Philippines, and Thailand, who have expressed interest in joining.


Over and above all that, however, at a more strategic level, Canada should also champion discussion and understanding of why building towards the long-run goal of broad accession to CPTPP is important. Open and inclusive institutions are at the core of providing the benefits of global economic integration to all countries.


Canada will also be Chair of the G7 Summit in 2025. This, along with the various ministerial and officials’ meetings leading up to the Summit, offers another critical avenue for Canada to take a leadership role in sustaining and promoting an open, rules-based global trading system.

    Former Canada Finance Minister’s Thank-You Letter to WEF Suggests More Collaboration Than Disclosed

    Former Finance Minister’s Thank-You Letter to WEF Suggests More Collaboration Than Disclosed
    A press photographer works next to the logo of the World Economic Forum (WEF) at the opening of their annual meeting in Davos on Jan. 15, 2024. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
    Noé Chartier

    By our friends at Epoch Times/ Noé Chartier

    Close interactions between Canadian cabinet ministers and the World Economic Forum are well-documented, but a newly revealed letter suggests forum staff may have been doing more work with the federal government than previously disclosed.

    In an undated letter to a WEF official, former Finance Minister Bill Morneau praised the organization and its collaboration to achieve “common” objectives.

    “I would also like to take this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation to the WEF staff, for the support provided to the Government of Canada,” wrote Mr. Morneau in the letter obtained through the access-to-information regime.

    Neither the WEF nor the Canadian government typically advertise what support the forum provides. The finance department has not replied to a request for information about the date of the letter and details of how WEF staff helped the government.

    The letter was addressed to Philipp Rösler, a former German politician who served as a WEF manager and head of its Centre for Regional Strategies.

    The federal government is known to have been involved in at least two WEF policy initiatives: the Known Traveller Digital Identification (KTDI) project and the Agile Nations network.

    Poilievre Reaffirms Ban on WEF Ties in Conservative Party, Calls Davos Crowd ‘Hypocrites’

    John Robson: The Feds’ Green Dreams Touted at WEF Are Detached From Reality

    KTDI was a pilot project between Canada, the Netherlands, and private sector interests to develop a system of digital credentials for airplane travel between countries. Agile Nations is a group of countries working to streamline regulations to usher in the WEF-promoted “Fourth Industrial Revolution” that includes gene editing and artificial intelligence.

    KTDI began in 2018, and Canada signed onto Agile Nations in November 2020, a few months after Mr. Morneau resigned during the WeCharity scandal. Both projects were worked on while Mr. Morneau was finance minister from 2015 to 2020.

    Since both these projects fell outside of Mr. Morneau’s portfolio as finance minister, it seems to suggest that his letter of appreciation to the WEF was referring to other joint collaborations.

    Canada's then-minister of Finance Bill Morneau speaks to the Canadian Club of Canada in Toronto, on March 6, 2020. (Cole Burston/The Canadian Press)
    Canada’s then-minister of Finance Bill Morneau speaks to the Canadian Club of Canada in Toronto, on March 6, 2020. (Cole Burston/The Canadian Press)

    The WEF’s mission statement says it is dedicated to “improving the state of the world.” It gathers leaders in the fields of politics, business, and activism to promote progressive policies on issues like climate change and making capitalism more “inclusive.” As is routine with the organization, it did not respond to requests for comment.

    Critics of the WEF, which gathers world elites to shape global policies, often disagree with its progressive agenda and warn about its influence on countries.

    “No staff, no ministers, no MPs in my caucus will be involved whatsoever in that organization,” Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre said in January.

    He added that officials who attend the forum’s annual meeting in Davos are “high flying, high tax, high carbon hypocrites” who travel in private jets while telling average citizens not to “heat their homes or drive their pickup trucks.”

    Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has also criticized the WEF, saying in 2022 she finds it “distasteful when billionaires brag about how much control they have over political leaders, as the head of that organization has.”

    Ms. Smith was likely referring to comments made by WEF founder and chairman Klaus Schwab in 2017, when he said said he was “very proud” to “penetrate the cabinets” of world governments, including that of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

    “I know that half of his cabinet or even more than half of his cabinet are actually Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum,” Mr. Schwab told an audience at Harvard University.

    WEF founder Klaus Schwab delivers a speech during the "Crystal Award" ceremony at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, on Jan. 16, 2023. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
    WEF founder Klaus Schwab delivers a speech during the “Crystal Award” ceremony at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, on Jan. 16, 2023. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

    Davos Links

    Mr. Morneau’s letter to the WEF comes from internal Finance Department records and is the only document in the release package that pertains to Mr. Morneau. It consists mostly of praise for the organization.

    “As a Steward of Economic Growth and Social Inclusion, I have had the privilege of observing first-hand and benefiting from the WEF’s important contributions to foster public and private collaboration towards developing concrete solutions for strong, broad-based economic growth,” he wrote, adding that WEF analysis of different topics such as “structural reform priorities” was “helpful to develop substantive policy measures.”

    He wrote that “as we enter another ambitious year for the WEF, I look forward to a continued fruitful collaboration to pursue our common objective of achieving stronger, sustainable and more inclusive growth.”

    Other department records relate to current Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and her involvement with the WEF. She is a board member of the forum and also an alumnus of the Young Global Leaders program that Mr. Schwab referenced.

    Mr. Morneau, who resigned as minister in 2020, is listed on the WEF website as an “agenda contributor“ and a ”digital member.” He was a regular participant at the group’s annual meetings in Davos, Switzerland, while he was in office.

    During those years, the Finance Department’s media relations office wasn’t shy about advertising ministerial trips to Davos.

    “Canada’s strong presence at the Forum underscores the importance of this meeting for shaping the international agenda and advancing economic opportunities for Canadians,” read a January 2020 press release from the department announcing Mr. Morneau’s trip.

    The Finance Department has not returned inquiries in recent years pertaining to Ms. Freeland’s involvement with the WEF, nor has it issued press releases referencing her involvement.

    Some have questioned whether Ms. Freeland’s role as deputy prime minister and finance minister as well as a forum board member constitutes a conflict of interest. The Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner said in its 2022 annual report it received more than 1,000 requests in a two-month period from members of the public to investigate the participation of MPs and ministers in the WEF.

    The office said the requests “did not provide sufficient information to warrant an investigation.” Ms. Freeland’s leadership position with the WEF has been declared to the office and has therefore been cleared.

    Featured image: Original paintings by R. Delaney.

    How to Avoid a PhD (Penalty for Hardworking Dummies): Debunking the Meritocracy Myth

    To All Who Will Say, “It Has Nothing to Do with Me”

    This book is a profound research work that exposes corruption, censorship, and corporate tyranny in the purported democratic system of the US. Hammond reveals the subversive role of the mainstream media in deceiving the public and manufacturing consent for perpetual wars, individual responsibility for institutional failures, and social injustice presented as a meritocracy. At the same time, argues Hammond, the incessant propaganda conditions the public to accept the denial of basic human rights such as healthcare, living wages, and higher education as undeserved luxuries.

    According to the author, through sophisticated mechanisms, the People Relations industry constantly disseminates the illusion of freedom and democracy and inculcates the myth. Hammond offers a brief history of media corruption through consolidation of ownership, currently reduced to five giant corporations. The author opens the first chapter with a short analysis of the classic 5 filters of mass media detailed in Herman and Chomsky’s 1988 Manufacturing Consent. Although Chomsky’s revelation is widely popular as every dissident’s bible, less known is that the authors dedicated the book to an Australian writer, Alex Carey, whom they consider a pioneer in the field of propaganda.

    According to Carey, people in the US have been subjected to an unparalleled, extensive, three-quarters century-long propaganda effort, designed to expand corporate rights by undermining democracy. Hammond traces the roots of propaganda back to the 1920s, when the founder of the People Relations field, Edward Bernays, initiated his mass psychological campaigns to win public opinion. Bernay’s successes include influencing women to smoke and promoting foreign intervention in Latin American countries at the behest of corporations, later known as Banana Republics.

    During that time, leading intellectuals such as Bernays and Walter Lippmann freely used the term “propaganda” as an indoctrination tool and promulgated the idea of manipulating the public.

    Bernay’s 1928 book titled Propaganda, was a literal manual for the ruling intelligentsia. According to Bernays, the masses should be unaware of the source of their influencers, while the audience is overwhelmed with carefully selected images and rhetoric by unknown agents. Another source used by Hammond is George Orwell’s unpublished preface titled “The Freedom of the Press” to his 1945 Animal Farm. A curious little-known fact is that Orwell had a hard time publishing the book in democratic Britain, and took him five years to find a publisher. Moreover, the preface, in which he explains the phenomenon of self-censorship and how in Western democracies it is done in a very subtle way in contrast with dictatorships where the censoring is open. Perhaps because of this analogy, the preface is still not published within the book, although could be found separately on the Internet.

    Tamara Hammond’s book extensively analyzes the current media status with emphasis on alternative media in the context of the rising censorship practiced by the owners of social media networks. According to the author, from Google to Facebook to X (nee Twitter) tne giant networks are obedient purveyors of the ruling oligarchy that transcends national borders. Hammond warns that we are being conditioned to accept a neo-feudal technocratic dictatorship based on fearmongering and deception. Much of the book is dedicated to educating the audience about the real dissidents in media and academia who fight against wars and corruption, and to liberate imprisoned journalists like Julian Assange.

    The epilogue features an allegorical tale about the slippery slope of corruption and the mechanisms of power that overwhelm even the most noble minds. Available for order on Amazon.

    Quality Over Quantity: How Canada’s Immigration System Can Catch Up


    Canada’s immigration point system is designed to select skilled immigrants who have the potential to contribute to the country’s economic growth and meet its evolving skills needs. However, Canada faces challenges in fully leveraging increased immigration levels to enhance the well-being of Canadians due to weaknesses in capital investment and a quantity/quality trade-off in selecting economic immigrants. Furthermore, recent reforms may work at cross purposes to this goal. They include category-based selection that targets low-paying occupations, which can discourage capital investment, and a recent surge in the number of temporary residents in low-wage jobs that also may have adverse effects on the quality of potential candidates for permanent residency.
     

    This study compares skilled immigration selection policy in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, with the objective of identifying key areas for improvement in Canadian policy. The skilled immigration point systems in Canada and Australia share some similarities, with both prioritizing a two-step immigration process, placing an emphasis on English proficiency and workforce age, and requiring pre-migration credential and English proficiency assessments. However, the two countries differ mainly in their strictness of criteria and their emphasis on occupational and language skills. Furthermore, Australia has shown more agility and creativity in its skilled migration reforms. Reforms in the UK and New Zealand have also put them ahead in the competition for talent.
     

    Based on this international comparison, the author makes recommendations for improvement. They include: 1) Setting a Minimum Points Threshold for Eligibility. As it is, Canada imposes no minimum points threshold for eligibility in its Express Entry points-based system. 2) Considering a Pre-admission Earnings Factor. Studies show the importance of pre-immigration earnings in predicting immigrants’ outcomes after arrival. The UK, New Zealand and Australia include this factor. 3) Boosting Standards under the Language Requirement. Official language skills are as important in predicting the initial earnings of principal applicants admitted under Canada’s Express Entry system as pre-immigration Canadian work experience, and even more important than educational level and age at the time of immigration. 4) Raising Business Immigration Numbers. Canada faces the challenge of weak business investment but is failing to select business immigrants with entrepreneurial skills, putting it at a disadvantage compared to competitors like Australia and the UK.

    The author thanks Tingting Zhang, Charles DeLand, Rosalie Wyonch, Charles Beach, Jodi Kasten, Mikal Skuterud and anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier draft. The author retains responsibility for any errors and the views expressed.

    Read the full report here.

    For the Silo, Parisa Mahboubi/C.D. Howe Institute.

    Parisa Mahboubi

    Parisa Mahboubi

    Parisa Mahboubi is a Senior Policy Analyst and leads the C.D. Howe Institute’s human capital policy program. Her research interest focuses on social policy with a concentration on demographic, skills, education, and labour market concerns. In addition to authoring research studies, she regularly writes a column for the Globe and Mail’s business section.

    Arab Public Opinion Poll About Israeli War On Gaza

    Doha, January 2024 // The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies announced the results of their public opinion poll regarding the Israeli war on Gaza on Wednesday 10 January 2024. The poll was carried out on a sample of 8000 respondents (men and women) from 16 Arab countries. The survey questions were selected to determine the opinions of citizens in the Arab region on important topics related to the Israeli war on Gaza.

    The results of the survey demonstrate the locality of the war as felt by Arab public opinion, with 97% of respondents expressing psychological stress (to varying degrees) as a result of the war on Gaza. 84% expressed a sense of great psychological stress.

    Extent of psychological stress felt during the war on Gaza

    About 80% of respondents reported that they regularly follow news of the war, compared to 7% who said that they do not follow it, a further indication that the Arab public sees this war as a local event. To access the news 54% of respondents relied on television, compared to 43% who relied on the internet.

    Extent of news followship about Israel’s war on Gaza

    It is noteworthy that the results highlighted that Arab public opinion does not believe that the military operation carried out by Hamas on 7 October 2023 was in pursuit of a foreign agenda. 35% of respondents considered that the most important reason for the operation was the continued Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, while 24% attributed it mostly to defence against Israel’s targeting of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and 8% saw it as a result of the ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip.

    The most important motivations for Hamas to carry out the military operation on 7 October 2023

     Most importantSecond most important
    The ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian land3513
    Defending al-Aqsa Mosque against attacks2421
    The ongoing blockade of Gaza812
    Ongoing and expanding settlement on Palestinian land68
    Liberating Palestinian detainees and prisoners in Israeli prisons613
    Israel’s rejection of the establishment of a Palestinian state45
    The United States’ failure to achieve a just peace23
    The international community’s disregard for Palestinian rights and the ongoing occupation45
    Halting the normalization process between Arab governments and Israel23
    Carrying out the plan or agenda of a foreign power such as Iran22
    Other21
    Don’t know / Declined to answer50
    No second option014
    Total100100

    While 67% of respondents reported that the military operation carried out by Hamas was a legitimate resistance operation, 19% reported that it was a somewhat flawed but legitimate resistance operation, and 3% said that it was a legitimate resistance operation that involved heinous or criminal acts, while 5% said it was an illegitimate operation.

    Assessments of Hamas’ military operation on 7 October 2023

    The results showed that there is an Arab consensus of 92% expressing solidarity with the citizens of the Arab region with the Palestinian people in Gaza. While 69% of respondents expressed their solidarity with Palestinians and support for Hamas, 23% expressed solidarity with Palestinians despite opposing Hamas, and 1% expressed a lack of solidarity with the Palestinians.

    Solidarity with Palestinians and support for Hamas

    The majority of respondents rejected comparisons between Hamas and ISIS made by predominately Israeli and Western politicians and media personalities.

    Comparisons between Hamas and ISIS

    When asked about the responses of regional and international powers to Israel’s war on Gaza, 94% considered the US position negatively, with 82% considering it very bad. In the same context, 79%, 78%, and 75% of respondents viewed positions of France, the UK, and Germany negatively. Opinion was split over the positions of Iran, Turkey, Russia, and China. While (48%, 47%, 41%, 40%, respectively) considered them positively (37%, 40%, 42%, 38%, respectively).

    Evaluation of international and regional positions

    In the same context, 76% of respondents reported that their position toward the United States following the Israeli war on Gaza had become more negative, indicating that the Arab public has lost confidence in the US. Furthermore, respondents demonstrated a near consensus (81%) in their belief that the US government is not serious about working to establish a Palestinian state in the 1967 occupied territories (The West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza).

    About 77% of respondents named the United States and Israel as the biggest threat to the security and stability of the region. While 51% saw the United States as the most threatening, 26% considered the biggest threat to be Israel. While 82% of respondents reported that US media coverage of the war was biased towards Israel, only 7% saw it as neutral.

    How opinion on US policy in the Arab region has changed since the war on Gaza

    Evaluation of US seriousness in establishing a Palestinian state in the 1967 Occupied Palestinian lands

    Biggest threats to the peace and stability of the region

     Greatest ThreatSecond Greatest Threat
    Gaza war202220202018Gaza War202220202018
    United States5139444325252328
    Israel2641373733283840
    Iran77101310131915
    Russia46238847
    France222110531
    Turkey22213252
    China12102220
    Other12
    Don’t know / Declined to answer61220
    No second option071767
    Aggregate100100100100100100100100

    Evaluation of US media coverage of the war on Gaza

    Arab public opinion sees the Palestinian Cause as an Arab issue, and not exclusively a Palestinian issue. A consensus of 92% believe that the Palestinian question concerns all Arabs and not just the Palestinians. On the other hand, 6% said that it concerns the Palestinians alone and they alone must work to solve it. It is worth noting that this percentage is the highest recorded since polling began in 2011, rising from 76% at the end of 2022, to 92% this year. Some countries recorded significant increases. In Morocco, it rose from 59% in 2022 to 95%, in Egypt from 75% to 94%, in Sudan from 68% to 91%, and in Saudi Arabia from 69% to 95%, a statistically significant increase that represents a fundamental shift in the opinions of the citizens of these countries.

    Consideration of the Palestinian Cause as an Arab issue over time

    Arab public opinion is almost unanimous in rejecting recognition of Israel, at a rate of 89%, up from 84% in 2022, compared to only 4% who support its recognition. Of particular note is the increase in the percentage of those who rejected recognition of Israel in Saudi Arabia from 38% in the 2022 poll to 68% in this survey. Such a statistically significant increase also applies to other countries such as Morocco, where the percentage rose from 67% to 78%, and Sudan, where it increased from 72% to 81%.

    Support/opposition for recognizing Israel over time

    When asked about their opinions on what measures Arab governments should take in order to stop the war in Gaza, 36% of respondents stated that Arab governments should suspend all relations or normalization processes with Israel, while 14% of them stated that aid and support should be brought into Gaza without Israeli approval, and 11% said that the Arab governments should use oil as a weapon to assert pressure on Israel and its supporters.

    Measures that should be taken by Arab governments to stop the war on Gaza

     Most important measureSecond most important measure
    Suspend relations or normalization with Israel3615
    Deliver aid to Gaza without Israeli approval1416
    Use the oil weapon to pressure Israel and its supporters1113
    Establish a global alliance to boycott Israel911
    Provide military aid to Gaza810
    Announce military mobilization56
    Reconsider relations with the United States46
    Reconsider relations with states that support Israel’s war on Gaza35
    Build alliances with states that have taken practical steps against Israel34
    Other32
    Don’t know / Declined to answer40
    No second option012
    Total100100

    There is a near consensus among Palestinian respondents from the West Bank (including Jerusalem), around 95%, that safety and freedom of movement between the governorates and cities of the West Bank and their sense of security and personal safety have been affected negatively since 7 October 2023.

    Negative effects experienced in the West Bank since 7 October 2023

    A further 60% of Palestinian respondents in the West Bank said that they had been subjected to or were witnesses to raids by the occupation army forces, while 44% said that they were subjected to arrest or interrogation by the Israeli army, and 22% reported that they were subjected to harassment by settlers.

    Frequency of witnessing or happening upon incidences of raids, arrests, or settler harassment in the West Bank since 7 October 2023

    This survey is the first of its kind to gauge public opinion on the topic across the Arab region. The field work was conducted from 12 December 2023 to 5 January 2024 in Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and the West Bank, Palestine (including Jerusalem). The surveyed communities represent 95% of the population of the Arab region and its far-flung regions. The sample in each of the aforementioned communities was 500 men and women, drawn according to cluster and self-weighted sampling methods to ensure that every individual in each country had an equal probability of appearing in the sample.

    For the Silo, Dr Ahmed Hussein, researcher at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies.

    9 Years Since China Landing- NASA Warns They Could Take Over The Moon

    It’s the 9th anniversary of China’s 2014 Moon landing and it deserves special attention. Many Westerners are unaware of their impressive accomplishment because for the most part it was not reported in the mainstream media. Even now, getting information on China’s mission is challenging and the reports that are readily available seem to be from non-Western sources such as Al-Jazeera or in the case of the following video: WION- India’s self proclaimed “first world news network”.

    Something else you may be unaware of

    China's Tiangong space station- basically Mir2.0
    Tiangong, officially the Tiangong space station, is a permanently crewed space station constructed by China and operated by China Manned Space Agency in low Earth orbit between 340 and 450 km above the surface. wikipedia

    Should we be surprised that these nations are eager to distribute their news and accomplishments? China and India are the main rivals to the United States in terms of Space launches and exploration and if they are ahead of the West then chances are no one here wants to run headlines emphasizing this fact.

    The politicization of space is not a new concept.

    Shortly after the end of World War 2,  Russia and America (using captured Nazi German rockets and scientists) relied on their own geniuses such as Sergei Korolev and Katherine Johnson in a heated race to enter space and to push forward with the goal of landing a man on the Moon. President Lyndon Johnson called this “the ultimate high ground“.  Russia did not succeed in a manned Moon landing but they did successfully land an advanced Rover which was controlled from the Earth by a team of operators. Clearly the Moon is an important place to visit even at incredible risk and financial cost.

    What compelled China to show up decades later than the USA?

    "It was confirmed as a new mineral by voting by the New Mineral Classification and Nomenclature Committee (CNMNC) of the International Mineralogical Association (IMA). This mineral is the sixth new mineral discovered by humans on the moon."

    What can we expect next? China is planning a crewed landing. America is planning a crewed landing. It’s a brand new space race.  For the Silo, Neil Corman. 

    AI Induced Shifting Subtexts- What Is And What Isn’t Art?

    Let’s go back to 2016 and re-consider how the works highlighted below are more relevant today than ever when asking “What is and isn’t art?”.  The recent surge in AI and chatbot produced ‘art’ has created new challenges in recognition, interpretation and validation. Or has it? [J.Barker Content Producer for The Silo]   It became immediately apparent that the rephrasing of the question “What is art?” to “What isn’t art?” signaled a dissolution of the boundary separating metaphor from reality.

    Since, citizen and artist alike have been plunged headlong into the bacchanals of postmodernity, and the question has been obscured under a heap of incongruous discourse and subtexts.

    Eva Davidova multimedia installation view
    Eva Davidova multimedia installation view

    Two curious and intrepid artists offer their answers to this exhausting and illuminating question in their discussions of unexplored spaces and shifting subtexts.

    Painter and multimedia artist Eva Davidova  tests the digital waters of virtual reality through immersive, programmatic experiences. Articulating the conviction that emerging technology is obliged to transcend commercial application, Davidova’s phantasmagoric 3D renderings attempt to draw the strings away from the hands of big business. Topics mentioned include the beauty of academic reciprocity, the fiscal realities of living in the metropolis, and the future of collaborative artistic environments.

    julie mehretu dispersion
    Julie Mehretu’s Dispersion

    Behind the meticulous and sweeping abstract landscapes from the mind of Julie Mehretu are subtle societal and historical cues, which inform and enrich the surface of her paintings. In her ebullient interview, Mehretu speaks of the benefits and restrictions that arise from using architectural semantics to ground explorations of political and social change.

    Wrought from countless painterly quotations, the identity of Mehretu’s brushstroke vanishes the moment it falls under interpretation.

    The elusive and curious nature of the Ethiopian artist’s aesthetic experiments, coupled with a steady ethical subtext make for an engaging and memorable listen.

    Featured image- “A Questionable Tale(#1)” 2022 Marina Zurkow/DALL-E (AI) 

    For the Silo, Brainard Carey.

    Children Worldwide Call For Promises Of Universal Education

    New York – Through an innovative, children-led campaign delivered by the UN’s global fund for education in emergencies, Education Cannot Wait (ECW), crisis-impacted girls and boys worldwide are sharing “Postcards from the Edge” to call on world leaders and public and private sector donors to make good on promises to ensure education for all by 2030 as outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals.

    These first-person accounts and drawings offer inspiring and thought-provoking portraits of the challenges facing girls and boys caught in conflict and protracted crises around the world.

    “They are inspiring and compelling stories of hope and an incredible resilience in the face of adversity and testaments to the amazing power of education to transform lives. We must listen to the world’s children. They deserve their human right to an education. Their voice must speak to our decency, they deserve to be heard,” said Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait.

    To date, more than 50 letters, drawings and videos have been received from crisis-affected girls and boys supported through ECW-funded programmes across more than 20 of the world’s toughest country-contexts.

    ECW’s strategic partners – including Educo, Plan International, Save the Children, Street Child, UNESCO, UNHCR, UNICEF, World Vision and many others – continue to collect these first-person accounts to highlight the singular power of education to end violence, hunger and poverty, and build a more peaceful world for generations to come.

    In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lucas*, a 14-year-old refugee from the Central African Republic recounts the story of seeing his mother murdered and his village burnt to the ground.

    Through a multi-year resilience programme delivered by UNHCR with funding from ECW, the boy is now back in school and dreams one day of becoming a doctor.

    In his postcard, Lucas makes an impassioned plea for world leaders “to think of us refugee children and provide funding to let us finish our studies.”

    Worldwide 222 million girls and boys like Lucas are having their futures ripped from them by the converging impacts of conflict, climate change, forced displacement and other protracted crises. Girls and children with disabilities are especially at risk.

    Several letters were submitted from girls and boys in Afghanistan. With new rules banning girls from education and denying women their human rights, it is not clear if Zehab* from the Uruzgan Province will be able to continue her education. But for now, with the support of ECW and Street Child, she is still able to attend a non-formal community-based learning programme.

    “I want to get education and become a well-known doctor. But I am wondering that I might not achieve my dreams, as girls are not allowed to attend schools in Afghanistan,” she says in her postcard. “I call on the world leaders to help us and give us the opportunity to learn and lead our future.”

    Leaders across the globe will come together at the Education Cannot Wait High-Level Financing Conference on February 16 and 17 in Geneva, Switzerland, to make good on commitments to ensure every child, everywhere, is offered a quality education.

    Throughout the event, youth advocates and global champions will read the Postcards from the Edge to ensure the voice of the world’s most vulnerable children are heard.

    Education Cannot Wait is calling on donors, foundations and high-net-worth individuals to mobilize US$1.5 billion over the next four years. With this funding, ECW and its strategic partners will reach 20 million children and adolescents with the safety, hope and opportunity that only quality education can provide.

    *Names have been changed for privacy purposes.

    #PostcardsFromTheEdge  – Letters from Children

    POSTCARDS
    “For me, #education is the only hope I have left to achieve my dream of becoming a doctor.”~Lucas, 14, 🇨🇫 refugee in #DRCongo.
    Read how @EduCannotWait+@UNHCR_DRC help children like Lucas achieve their dreams!👉bit.ly/3XTpzEf#PostcardsFromTheEdge
    Darline, 14, from #Haiti🇭🇹 demands change & an #education!
    @EduCannotWait’s #PostcardsFromTheEdge Campaign amplifies the voices of girls & boys like Darline ahead of #HLFC2023.Read Darline’s powerful letter📨http://bit.ly/3ixhKoX @UNICEFHaiti#222MillionDreams✨📚
    “I want to be an architect in the future to help build & reconstruct my country #Syria🇸🇾 & all the countries that are affected by war & destruction.” ~Kamil, 12, refugee in #Iraq.
    Read @EduCannotWait’s #PostcardsFromTheEdge delivered w/@SavetheChildren.📨 http://bit.ly/3kui6Nt 
    “I aspire to be a #teacher because I feel I have a heart to care, ears to listen, time to give & ideas to share” ~Huma, #Pakistan🇵🇰.
    Read her #PostcardsFromTheEdge to hear how @EduCannotWait+@UNICEF_Pakistan is making #222MillionDreams✨📚 come true.📨bit.ly/3R7l4UE
    11-year-old Zawad, a refugee in #Bangladesh🇧🇩, wants his community and family to prioritize education. With support from @UNICEFBD+@EduCannotWait his dreams are coming true. 
    Learn more in his inspiring #PostcardsFromTheEdge 👉bit.ly/3DcFl5s
    “I call on the world leaders to help us and give us the opportunity to learn and lead our future.” ~Zehab, #Afghanistan🇦🇫. Read Zehab’s @EduCannotWait’s #PostcardsFromTheEdge 📨https://bit.ly/3CTEpmh
    Like & retweet if you agree #EducationCannotWait for #Afghan girls!


    Christmas Gift Made In China? Historical Long Distance Trade Lead To Modern Global Lives Of Things

    Until quite recently, the field of early modern history largely focused on Europe.

    The overarching narrative of the early modern world began with the European “discoveries,” proceeded to European expansion overseas, and ended with an exploration of the fac-tors that led to the “triumph of Europe.” When the Journal of Early Modern History was established in 1997, the centrality of Europe in the emergence of early modern forms of capitalism continued to be a widely held assumption. Much has changed in the last twenty years, including the recognition of the significance of consumption in different parts of the early modern world, the spatial turn, the emergence of global history, and the shift from the study of trade to the commodities themselves.

    Sometimes conferences disappear from view as soon as the delegates disperse.

    Other times, when the papers are published in an edited volume, conferences come to be seen as important milestones in the historiography. The two volumes edited by James Tracy, entitled The Rise of Merchant Empires and The Political Economy of Merchant Empires published in 1990 and 1991, respectively, move through their various stages of production, ownership, transmission and transformation .

    Moreover, those stages are overlapping, circulatory and contradictory; objects move in and out of collections, as they move in and out of fashion, and meanings are never stable. When a feathered crown is produced in Spanish America, for example, it has a very different meaning from when it enters into a cabinet of curiosity, and when it is taken out of the cabinet to appear in a spectacular performance in the street or in the theatre, it once again takes on a different meaning.

    Objects gain biographies; earlier meanings of objects are never erased but reshaped and translated to new circumstances, as Leah Clark showed in her study of the circulations of gems and jewels through the hands of a variety of owners in quattrocento Italy. Have we lost this meaning connection with mass produced items from China?

    Such insights have benefitted not only from the global turn but also from developments in the fields of anthropology and art history, making the field more interdisciplinary than it was when the study of the trade in goods focused more on their trade than on the goods themselves.

    The Founding of a New Journal

    Despite Tracy’s efforts, European actors continued to hold central stage in the field. When the Journal of Early Modern History (JEMH) was established in 1997, a decade after the Minnesota conference, the centrality of Europe in the emergence of early modern forms of capitalism, for example, continued (and still continues) to be a widely held assumption.  In part, this can be explained by the powerful legacy of giants in the field like Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein.

    1 James Tracy, ed.,The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350-1750, Studies in Comparative Early Modern History (Cambridge, 1990); James Tracy, ed., The Political Economy of Merchant Empires, Studies in Comparative Early Modern History (Cambridge, 1991).

    2 Herman Van der Wee, “Structural Changes in European Long-Distance Trade, and Particularly in the Reexport Trade from South to North, 1350-1750,” in The Rise of Merchant Empires, 14-33; Niels Steensgaard, “The Growth and Composition of the Long-Distance Trade of England and the Dutch Republic before 1750,” in The Rise of Merchant Empires, 102-52; The importance of comparative methodologies is also spelled out in the short editorial that accompanies the first part of the first volume of the JEMH. See James D. Tracy, “From the Editors,” Journal of Early Modern History 1 (1 January 1997):3

    Braudel’s concern was entirely with European history over the longue durée; Wallerstein’s 1976 study identified Europe as one of the core regions in the modern capitalist economy as it emerged in the sixteenth century. Regions like Central Africa, India and China were designated as peripheries, meaning that their natural resources and low-skill, labor-intensive production sustained the economic growth of the core region. Wallerstein’s framing of the relationship between the early modern European core and its peripheries formed the base for much of the scholarship of the past decades, including numerous studies of the long-distance or intercontinental trade between core and periphery.

    Much that was written also continued to identify long-distance trade as the preserve of either the various East India Companies associated with individual nations, or of the specifically named merchant communities such as the Armenians, the Jews, Wang Gungwu’s Hokkien merchants, or the Bajaras and Banyas merchant communities.

    Such groups appear in the literature as having a clear identity that separates them from other groups and an often marginal status that makes them especially suited to the life of the itinerant merchant who covers vast distances.

    And for much of the 1990s and beyond, the emphasis continued to be on commodities traded over long distances, from Asia to Europe via land or sea routes, including luxury items that justified the high cost associated with their transport. Precious metals were sent from the Americas to Asia, silks and spices arrived in the Levant via overland trade routes, and once the Europeans had rounded the Cape of Good Hope, luxury goods like porcelains, precious stones, and exotic hardwoods were shipped across the oceans along with silks and spices. Long-distance trade as it appears in Tracy’s two volumes on merchant empires was undoubtedly seen as important, but as essentially different from the bulk trade in grains, timber and salt that, for example, underpinned the growth of the early modern Dutch economy.

    3 Fernand Braudel,Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, trans. Siân Reynolds, 3 vols. (Berkeley, 1992); Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1976). At least 23 research articles published between 1997 and the present in JEMHquote Braudel’s work, and a further five quote Wallerstein.

    4 Gungwu Wang, “Merchants without Empire: The Hokkien Sojourning Communities,” in The Rise of Merchant Empires, 400-422; Irfan Habib, “Merchant Communities in Precolonial India,” in The Rise of Merchant Empires, 371-99.

    In other words, when the JEMH was founded, the centrality of Europe in shaping global trade relations, the separation of agents into distinct nation-based groups, and the classification of goods over long distances as luxuries of less importance all still had a very strong presence.

    One major change did occur, however, more or less between the appearance of The Rise of Merchant Empires in 1990, and the establishment of the JEMH in 1997.

    John Brewer and Roy Porter’s 1993 Consumption and the World of Goods was one of those transformative collections of articles that inaugurated a whole new way of doing history.6 Brewer and Porter were not the first to use the title; Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood had already published a book with a very similar title in 1979. But Brewer and Porter, and many others who went on to publish in the field of what we might call consumption studies, took the study of the consumer in a new direction, away from the eighteenth-century European debates over whether the consumption of luxury goods was morally justifiable, and towards sophisticated studies of the complex contexts in which people desired goods and in which that desire and demand for goods went on to transform society, culture and the ………… to continue reading click here for full document in PDF format.

    For the Silo by Anne Gerritsen, University of Warwick. Paper courtesy of academia.edu

    Your Electronic Goods Recycling Donations Become Bank Deposits

    Used and broken electronics such as computers, cellphones, dvd players, washers and dryers still hold intrinsic value because if you were to peer inside these things you’d notice a lot of wire and circuitry. There is a surprisingly substantial amount of copper, silver and gold waiting for “the recycling”.

    Consumerism- the acquisition of goods, is largely based today on electronic devices- large screen televisions or smartphones for example. Many of us feel the need to upgrade regularly: bigger screens for our living rooms and faster and more powerful phones.  But in broad terms, our discarded electronic goods contain about the same amount of silver, copper, gold and platinum as the new items we are replacing them with.

    How much value are we talking about?

    It is difficult to determine an exact value of gold and other precious materials in an average cellphone. This is because no two models are exactly alike, no two batteries are exactly alike.

    Lux Bringer from reddit.com:

    All of a sudden these, “bring your old cellphones to us so we can recycle them for you” campaigns are making a lot more sense. Sneaky bastards.

     PtrN from reddit.com:PtrN                                                                                                         

    I’m not sure. I’m seeing that the average cell phone has 1/8 a gram of gold in it from other comments. At the time of this writing, CNN currently has gold going at $1650USD per troy ounce. I crunched the numbers and am seeing that there is about $6.60USD worth of gold in a cellphone. Not too bad, but I don’t know how profitable it will be after you take into account the costs of transportation and the extraction process itself.

    Thoust from reddit.com:

    There are other materials in a phone they can salvage besides gold

    professor_fatass from reddit.com:

    According to the article you also get platinum, palladium, and copper. As well as the glass and plastic which may not be worth much but it can still be recycled.

    Interesting isn’t it?

    Let’s consider the price of copper. Right now in Canada it is just under 4$CDN per pound. If you’re keen and want to sell your own scrap copper you will need a lot of it. An average washing machine motor has about 8$CDN worth of copper wiring up for grabs. http://www.instructables.com/id/how-to-get-tons-of-free-enameled-copper-wire/http://priceofscrapmetal.com/how-to-sell-scrap-copper-wire/

    Gold!

    There is gold and platinum inside computer circuit boards and hard drives. Most of the gold is an alloy or plated over another metal but at highs predicted to reach near $1,8000USD per ounce- a high volume recycling effort will pay off.

    Bleepin’ Animinion from bleepingcomputer.com:

    Any, true recycling effort that would be of a profitable nature needs to be EPA approved. Due to the multiple hazardous materials mixed in with the minute amounts of precious metals. As well as the highly toxic removal and heavy metals separations processes. Also as an example it would take an average of one ton of random circuit-board waste to generate one pound of gold. Add to that electronic grade precious metals are not the expensive jewelry grade high dollar metals. Therefore looking at the gold market is not the price you would get. So the profit you would make on the precious metals would be eaten up by the fees and expense of waste disposal of the one ton of hazardous useless waste product left behind after you reclaimed the precious and hazardous heavy metals. This is definitely not a a project to undertake on a small scale in your garage.

    This last quote is an important thing to consider.

    If you are considering dropping off your scrap electronics and appliances ask the receiving party if they are environmentally approved and a member of an Electronic Stewardship.  After all, your discarded electronics will earn a tidy sum of money for a large scale salvager. The least they can do is operate within the law and operate with an environmental conscience. But there is some worry.

    The salvagers are looking for an uninformed public- they set up their marketing and advertising in a way that makes no mention of the economic benefits they stand to make.

    They seldom if ever offer you a small stipend for your ‘donated scrap’ and perhaps even worse, many pose as “good deed” companies ridding us of our “broken goods” destined for the landfill. The Ontario Electronic Stewardship  is a non-profit group that overseas responsible recycling of electronics.  This Stewardship works with existing legal frameworks put in place by Waste Diversion Ontario and the 2002 Waste Diversion Act.  www.wdo.ca

    Social impact in the developing world.

    In Southern China over 100,000 people including children spend their lives dismantling discarded electronic devices for scrap metal and an unknown number are doing the same thing in Nigeria.  http://www.economist.com/news/international/21570678-growing-mounds-electronic-scrap-can-mean-profits-or-scandals-cadmium-lining

    In this file photo from 2001, a migrant child sits atop a pile of unrecyclable computer waste imported to Guiya, China, from other countries.

    Basal Action Network

    Some players are keeping it real.

    Not every electronic device recycling campaign is shady.  Increasingly, not-for-profit groups and volunteer fire departments are setting up large recycling bins with signage such as “your donated scrap metal and electronics helps fund X”. 

    If you are considering dropping off discarded electronics to your local “recycling and scrap drive” ask a few questions. Where are the profits from the salvaged materials going? Is the company operating the drive aware of the Ontario Electronic Stewardship guidelines? What happens to your donated goods at the end of the cycle- are they destined for a landfill or for China?

    Sci Fi Like Devices Part Of Queen’s Park Security Update

    Canadian director James Cameron projected into the future for 1986's Aliens radar motion tracker. Now this tech seems to be ready for Queen's Park.
    1986 film- Aliens radar motion tracker. Now this tech is ready for Queen’s Park.

    Eight years ago at Queen’s Park, the Cross-Border Institute (CBI), part of the University of Windsor, hosted an event to demonstrate advances in security, surveillance and fingerprinting technology. That technology had immediate application for border crossing screening, supply chain security and cybersecurity.

    The CBI hosted the event as part of its mandate to support ongoing, practical research aimed at addressing numerous cross-border issues with the United States. The CBI works in collaboration with a number of University of Windsor departments, private sector partners and organizations and all levels of government, looking at making land border crossings work better.  The technologies demonstrated represented a number of research projects and initiatives currently being conducted at the University of Windsor as part of its strategic focus related to understanding borders. These projects and activities were also supported by the Department of Research and Innovation at the University of Windsor.

    Queen’s Park staff and members had a first-hand opportunity to see the work of Dr. Roman Maev’s high-speed biometrics ultrasonic system for 3-D fingerprint imaging. This system allows reconstruction of fingerprint patterns from deeper layers of skin while embedding the internal parameters of these deeper layers as key features of the fingerprints. Also on display was Dr. Sazzadur Chowdhury’s 77GHz short range radar. At the time- the smallest and thinnest in the world and economical enough to be carried by an individual for mobile motion detection or used in multiples in such large surveillance application as airports. Cue the Aliens movie soundtrack.  Both Drs. Maev and Chowdhury are members of the University of Windsor Faculty.

    The University of Windsor has developed an area of expertise in technologies that can detect threats and violations, provide positive identification and secure the transfer of data. The projects all have practical security applications and are at or approaching the commercialization stage. All of these projects have received support from the Federal Development Corporation for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario) Prosperity Initiative Project 802390, which is administered by the Cross-Border Institute at the University of Windsor.

    Quick Facts: The Cross-Border Institute at the University of Windsor was founded in 2008 under the direction of Dr.  Bill Anderson.  The Centre approaches the study of border issues from a multi-disciplinary perspective that includes economic development, geography, engineering, management science and political science.  The CBI has focused on initiatives, events and research that address ongoing challenges at land crossings between Canada and the United States. The CBI, as part of the University of Windsor, looks at the impact of trends in cross-border transportation and the impact of policy decisions by governments on both sides of the border. Currently, the CBI is working to launch Canada’s first university level certificate program in border management, Managing Borders and International Trade.

    Technology Quick Facts:
    Short Range Radar for Surveillance ApplicationsUWindsor engineering professor Dr. Chowdhury has developed the world’s smallest and thinnest short-range radar unit. Because it is inexpensive to build and completely weatherproof it can be used effectively in a variety of applications for motion detection, ranging from individual units attached to a soldiers uniform to arrays of units for border and perimeter surveillance.

    High Speed Biometrics Ultrasonic System for 3D Fingerprint Imaging – World-renowned UWindsor physicist Dr. Maev has taken a new approach to fingerprinting using acoustic microscopy technology. This device generates far more detailed information from fingerprint images below the skin level, making it more accurate than conventional technologies, yet it is fast and practical.

    Real Time Location System for Security and Indoor LocationBased on the novel indoor positioning method developed by Dr. Majid Ahmadi and Dr. Rashid Rashidzadeh at the University of Windsor, this system will identify, locate and track people in indoor environments. Its positioning algorithm takes advantage of various sensors on smartphones to improve positioning accuracy.

    Automated Vehicle IdentificationCameras that can read license plate information are increasingly common. University of Windsor computer scientists Dr. Imran Ahmad and Dr. Boubakeur Boufama have taken this technology several steps farther, allowing the shape and colour of a car to be extracted from video feeds and stored in a database. This technology will be tested in the University of Windsor’s new parking structure in the Spring of 2015.

    Data Encryption Using Graphical Processing Units (GPUs)Data encryption is an increasingly important function that normally requires the use of expensive add-on cards known as crypto-accelerators. UWindsor researcher, Dr. Roberto Muscedere has developed algorithms that make it possible to achieve the same kind of encryption using much cheaper GPU units typically found in laptop computers and game consoles.

    Secure vehicle-to-vehicle (v2v) communicationsAdvanced vehicular communications technology has enabled such life-saving features as collision warning, collision avoidance and emergency vehicle signaling. However these systems may be vulnerable to cyber-attacks that threaten the privacy and safety of drivers and passengers. University of Windsor faculty researchers Dr. Mitra Mirhassani, Dr. Kemel Tepe and Dr. Wu and their students are working to fill security gaps in V2V systems.

    Control, Monitoring and Surveillance in Wireless SystemsLarge scale power and communications systems, manufacturing and process control plants, networked building energy systems and others are increasingly controlled by autonomous, sensor-rich, wireless systems. Given the consequence of failure in these systems and the danger of cyber-attacks upon them, UWindsor researchers Dr. Mehrdad Saif, Dr. Rashid Rashidzadeh, Dr. Alavi and Dr. Razavi-Far are developing methods to detect intruders and faults early.

    Sensor fusion for concealed weapons detectionConventional images are good for revealing a person’s identity, while infrared images can spot concealed weapons. But what if you want to both identify a person and know if they are concealing a weapon? A University of Windsor engineer, Dr. Jonathan Wu, has found a way to fuse information from different sensors to produce a clear image not only of a suspect’s appearance but also of any concealed weapon they are carrying. For the Silo, Jarrod Barker. 
    Learn More: www.uwindsor.ca/crossborder

    Canada’s Truth And Reconciliation Commission

    Reconcilation

    [This article was first published by The Silo on April 22, 2014] On June 10, 2009, the Honourable Justice Murray Sinclair, Marie Wilson and Chief Wilton Littlechild were appointed as Commissioners to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), a component of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.

    Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is unique from other commissions around the world in that its scope is primarily focused on the experiences of children and its research spans more than 150 years (one of the longest durations ever examined). It is also the first court-ordered truth commission to be established and most notable, the survivors themselves set aside 60 million dollars of the compensation they were awarded to help establish the TRC.

    Over the course of its 5 year mandate, one of the main tasks of the Commission is to create an accurate and public historical record of the past regarding the policies and operations of the former residential schools, what happened to the children who attended them, and what former employees recall from their experiences.

    It is difficult for Canadians to accept that the policy behind the government funded, church run schools attempted to “kill the Indian in the child”.  The violent underpinnings of the policy challenge the way we think about Canada, and call into question our national character and values.  We have been taught to believe that we are a peaceful nation, glorious and free.

    The residential school legacy shines a light in our darkest corners, where we feel most vulnerable.

    Over 130 Residential Schools were located across Canada, with the last one closing in 1996.   More than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children as young as five years old were forcibly removed from their families and placed in institutions that shamed their languages, customs, families, communities, traditions, cultures and history.  In essence, they were not allowed be themselves and denied the love and belonging owed to all children.

    Reconcilation

    While some former students had positive experiences at residential schools, many suffered emotional, physical and sexual abuse, and others died while attending these schools. Other lessons in trauma included assimilating children to gender roles, non-skilled labour and religion to prepare them for future integration.   For the parents left behind, the worst lessons in shame, grief, loss and disconnection. Whole societies were undone.

    In addition to creating the public historical record of the past, the survivors also tasked the Commission to reveal to Canadians the full and complete story.

    What were they thinking? Why should it matter to ordinary Canadians?

    Here’s why:  When we tell our stories we change the world. When we don’t tell our stories we miss the opportunity to experience empathy and to cultivate authenticity, joy and belonging. (Brené Brown, 44) Through story-telling, the survivors are compelling Canadians to listen and respond with deep compassion and to re-set relationships in a big way in this country.  This is our greatest opportunity to recognize shared history and our shared humanity.   These stories are a gift and will help us to shape our shared future.

    Thomas Moore before and after his entrance into the Regina Indian Residential School in Sasketchewan in 1874. image: Library and Archives Canada/NL-022474
    Thomas Moore before and after his entrance into the Regina Indian Residential School in Sasketchewan in 1874. image: Library and Archives Canada/NL-022474

    Through statement gathering at national or regional events and at TRC Community Hearings, former students, their descendants and anyone who has been affected by the Residential Schools legacy, had an opportunity to share their individual experiences in a safe and culturally supportive environment.   The TRC concluded its last community hearing in March 2014 and has collected more than 6, 200 statements.

    Almost all of them were video-and-audio-recorded and range from a few minutes to a few hours.  The statements will be stored at the National Research Centre on Indian Residential Schools at the University of Manitoba.  Students, researchers and members of the public will be able to access the statements to learn about residential schools and the legacy they leave behind.

    Reconcilation

    As the TRC begins to reveal to Canadians the full and complete story of residential schools and inspire a process of reconciliation across this country, ordinary Canadians seem ill-equipped to make the journey from shame to empathy.  “We know the voices singing, screaming, wanting to be heard- but we don’t hear them because fear and blame muffle the sounds” (Brené Brown, 42)  We need to prepare ourselves to go to the dark corners of our history, so we can stand in the light together as equals.

    In my next article, I will share with you more about empathy, how to practice empathy and why its essential to building meaningful and trustworthy relationships.) For the Silo, Leslie Cochran.

    (Brené Brown, 42 and Brené Brown, 44) are taken from her first book “I thought it was just me.”

    How Do Canada Provinces Grade In Taxpayer Fiscal Transparency?

    September 15, 2022 – Taxpayers and citizens need greater fiscal transparency from Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial governments, says the latest report from the C.D. Howe Institute.

    In “The Right to Know: Grading the Fiscal Transparency of Canada’s Senior Governments, 2022,” William B.P. Robson and Nicholas Dahir graded these governments’ budgets, estimates and financial statements on how well they let legislators and voters understand their fiscal plans and hold them to account for fulfilling them. The grades range from A to D. While some of the governments present helpful and timely budgets and financial statements, others fall badly short.

    The authors underline that budgets, estimates and financial statements must let interested but non-expert users find and understand and act on key information.

    “Taxpayers’ and citizens’ ability to monitor, influence and react to how legislators and officials manage public funds is fundamental to representative government,” say Robson and Dahir. “We need to check that legislators and government officials are acting in the interest of the people they represent, and we need to respond if we conclude that they are acting negligently or in their own interest. Financial reports are key tools for monitoring governments’ performance of their fiduciary duties.”

    image: Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau website. Link to Transparency PDF: https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/backgrounders/2015/11/27/open-and-accountable-government

    While much of the financial information presented to legislators and the public by Canada’s governments has improved over time, the assigned grades reveal significant shortfalls. This year’s report card covers year-end financial statements for fiscal year 2020/21 and budgets and estimates for 2021/22. The results were as follows:

    • Manitoba, British Colombia and the Northwest Territories trailed the the class with grades of D;
    • The federal government got a D+ – which was actually an improvement from an F last year, when it failed to produce a budget;
    • Newfoundland and Labrador also got a D+;
    • Nova Scotia scored a C and Prince Edward Island scored a C+;
    • Quebec scored a B- and Ontario scored a B;
    • Nunavut, Saskatchewan, and New Brunswick each scored B+;
    • Alberta and Yukon topped the class with grades of A and A- respectively.

    These governments tax, spend and borrow hundreds of billions of dollars, and the fiscal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will make their financial position all the more important in the future. The authors conclude: “This annual report card hopes to encourage further progress and limit backsliding. Canadians can get more transparent financial reporting and better fiscal accountability from their governments, if they demand it.” For the Silo, Lauren Malyk.

    For more than 60 years, the C.D. Howe Institute has researched and published on policy challenges and potential solutions aimed at improving the performance of Canada’s economy and raising Canadians’ living standards.

    Read the Full Report

    Featured image via GIFT- The Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency

    Quirky Doc About One Man’s Quest For Supreme Tea

    The movie poster says it all

    Invest a little over an hour watching this documentary about tea and you might find yourself contemplating a new connection between rural farming communities and the tea farmers of China. That’s because All in this Tea deals with all aspects of Chinese tea production, but takes a special interest in how a new demand for high quality, organic Chinese tea is creating new opportunities for Chinese rural farmers.

    The story begins by focusing on David Lee Hoffman’s elusive quest for rare and perfect teas.

    David is a renowned tea importer and to say that he loves tea is an understatement. Based on the passion and knowledge shown in this doc, he seems to live for the stuff. Hoffman sees himself as a cultural zealot, promoting the rich history of simple Chinese farming practices and educating the western world on the merits of drinking pure, organic tea produced in the “Chinese way”.

    He makes the act of producing tea seem like the ultimate expression of agricultural art.

    His journey takes him to remote, obscure farms where he begins the process of encouraging the Chinese tea board to end mass farming practices and belligerent pesticide uses. His goal is to create a new tea farming economy, one where quality takes precedence over quantity.  If you like tea or if you want to learn more about Chinese tea farming practices, If you’re a tea drinker or know someone who is (don’t we all?) then All in this Tea is the right documentary for you.  For the Silo, Jarrod Barker.

    20th Century Masters: Picasso’s Guernica

    “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth” –Pablo Picasso

    Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973) was one of the most well-known artists of the 20th century. Throughout his long and prolific career, Picasso both innovated and participated in important artistic movements such as realism, cubism and surrealism.  In comparison to Vincent van Gogh, the infamous starving artist, Picasso was one of the first modern artists to achieve great wealth and celebrity in his lifetime.

    Possibly the most important work that Picasso produced was Guernica (1937).

    This large scale black and white mural (approximately 12 x 26 feet), was commissioned for the Spanish Pavilion in the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris and was completed by Picasso in under a month.  In it, the artist depicted a catastrophic incident from the Spanish Civil War, wherein the Nazis conducted carpet bombing experiments on the town of Guernica, in the Basque region of Spain.

    File:Guernica at the Whitechapel - geograph.org.uk - 1593698.jpg -  Wikimedia Commons

    Historically, Spain had been ruled by a monarchy up until the 1930s, at which time it was replaced by a republican government that promised social and economic reform and a redistribution of goods and land.  Spanish conservatives disliked this idea and headed by General Francisco Franco, they launched an insurrection that led to the Spanish Civil War.  Aided by the Fascists and Nazis, General Franco assumed dictatorship of the country and ruled until his death in 1975.

    During this time of turmoil, Picasso was not in Spain but working in Paris.

    This is important to note when considering his choice of palette. He would have been paying attention to the events taking place in his native country largely through newspapers, transforming the black and white newsreel into a large scale canvas.  Also, by choosing a dichromatic colour scheme, Picasso allowed the subject matter to stand out over colour.

    Prominently positioned in this work is the Minotaur (a half-bull/half-man monster), an important symbol for Spanish people representing the tyranny of General Franco and his Nazi and Fascist supporters. Picasso  used distortion in the imagery and figures to portray the horrors and suffering of innocent civilians massacred by the carpet bombing. This, in combination with the palette, evokes in the viewer the sensation of a stark nightmare, tying the work to the surrealist movement.

    On a final note, Picasso was adamant that this work not be displayed in Spain until democracy was restored.

    On loan to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Guernica was returned to Spain in 1981. For the Silo, Eve Yantha. 

    FEDS ADD PLASTIC TO TOXIC SUBSTANCES LIST

    This Plastic Free July The Environmental Defence Canada organization is calling out Canada’s top plastic polluters, also known as Big Plastic—the companies that turn oil and gas into plastics.

    This spring, the federal government added plastic to the Toxic Substances List under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA). The listing means Canada can better manage the production, use and disposal of plastic and it will be required to address the harms caused by plastic in the environment. This is progress! But now Canada is being sued by its three biggest plastic producers—NOVA Chemicals, Dow Chemical and Imperial Oil—in an effort to prevent any regulations that would help reduce plastic pollution.

    To add insult to injury, Big Plastic insists plastic is safe and necessary while blaming others, namely society and municipal waste systems, for the havoc their products wreak on our environment.  Big Plastic has been flying under the radar for too long. It’s time to call them out!
    alt_text
    Canada now finds itself on the front lines of a war waged by high-priced lawyers and public relations professionals on behalf of some of the biggest companies in the world. Instead of being part of the solution, Big Plastic is rolling out trashy tactics to protect its bottom line and increase production.  

    Help us call out NOVA Chemicals, Dow Chemical and Imperial Oil for suing the federal government. Let’s hold them accountable for their role in creating one of the world’s biggest pollution crises.  

    Not on Twitter? No problem! You can still take action. If you haven’t already, tell the federal government that you support regulations to end Canada’s plastic pollution problem. Help us spread the word by sharing this action on Facebook or simply forwarding this email to your family and friends. Together for change,
    For the Silo, Karen Wirsig.

    How Covid Affects Ontario Legislature

    The past week has been a whirlwind of activity in Ontario politics.    Some have asked about my absence from the Legislature for the vote on May 31.    

    With the advent of COVID-19, all political parties decided to divide the sitting members of the Legislature into two groups with equal representation from all parties. 

    Separate groups in the Legislature are an attempt to diminish the spread of COVID-19.  

    The Legislature is divided into two groups or cohorts in case COVID-19 swept through the sitting members, which could result in all members being in quarantine and the Legislature grinding to a halt. Instead, with two groups, only part of the Legislature would end up in quarantine and the other half could take over.   

    My group was not designated to be in the Legislature May 31. For this reason, I was not present in the House. All parties agreed to not have remote voting in the Ontario Legislature. I am presently working from home, including serving virtually on Standing Committees.    

    The motion passed on Monday relates to the ability to extend and amend existing orders under the Reopening Ontario Act. Orders made under the Act’s authority have always been, and will continue to be, required to be extended in 30-day increments by Cabinet. All orders may also be amended by Cabinet at any time to loosen or tighten restrictions as necessary. These Orders have been the mechanism that we use to implement the COVID-19 response since last July, including the colour-coded framework, the shutdown, and now the roadmap to reopening.   

    Please note that the declaration of emergency and Stay-at-Home orders have expired as a result of key indicators for COVID-19 trending in the right direction and significant progress being made in vaccinations.   

    However, because of the new, fast-growing Indian B.1.617.2 and to allow for higher vaccination rates, our government made the difficult decision to continue with remote learning for all elementary and secondary students across the province for the remainder of this school year. This will allow the province to continue its focus on accelerating COVID-19 vaccinations to support a safe summer and return to in-person learning in September for the 2021-22 school year.   

    The health and safety of Ontario students, staff, educators and families remains a top priority.  

    On a personal note, my wife Cari and I both contracted COVID-19 and have completely recovered.  Cari is home from Joseph Brant Hospital and is doing very well after a week-and-a-half there, including one week in Intensive Care. We have ended our self-isolation, although we continue to follow public health guidelines.     

    We can’t begin to express our appreciation for all the messages of support and concern – thank you everyone!!    

    My positive test for the N501Y mutation of the UK B.1.1.7 variant was a result of picking up the virus just prior to my vaccination.

    The changing face of the pandemic: New COVID-19 variants spark concern

    We must also be vigilant as the new B.1.617.2 variant, which was first identified in India and entered the province through Canada’s international borders, grew in Ontario by 600 per cent from May 12 to May 19.  

    The threat of new variants reinforces my belief that we all must continue to be cautious because of this highly transmissible disease.    For the Silo, Toby Barrett MPP for Haldimand-Norfolk.   

    5 Ways Conversation Could Get You Punched In The Mouth

    Take it from the queen of verbal mishaps, there may not be a right way to start a conversation but on the wrong day, a poor choice of words could get your tongue snatched out of your mouth. Believe me when I say, you do not want that problem on your hands. So, to minimize your risks, I’ve narrowed down a solid list of WRONG ways to start a conversation, with the hopes that you’ll take heed and have more thoughtful discussions in the New Year.

    I’m not condoning violence of any sort but I can tell you with absolute certainty that you are in great danger if you say any of these things to the wrong person. Choose wisely.

    She was asking for it-
    If somehow in your mangled mind you believe that a woman who dresses provocatively, gets drunk or “chooses” an abusive partner deserves to be assaulted, well you might just deserve to lose a few teeth. The reality is, we could all make better choices from time to time but you don’t get to be the judge of anyone but yourself. Victim blaming is never okay. This type of thinking perpetuates a culture of abuse. You’re better than that…right? Hold abusers accountable for their actions. If you can’t do that, just be quiet.

    TV dust and wives

    Are you pregnant?-
    You know good and well I’m not pregnant. This age old attempt to body shame women has gotten many people hurt, from the ancient times of Jesus of Nazareth to the current age of the Kardashians. Taking cheap shots at a woman’s body is simply a bad idea. If you’re genuinely curious to know if a woman is pregnant, you’ll just have to wait until she announces it. If the news never comes, well there’s your answer. If you’re concerned that she could possibly be gaining too much weight, start an exercise group and invite all of your friends to participate.

    Pregnant or fat

    The earth is flat-
    You would think a person would only say this in a conversation for shock value or to be provocative but it turns out this is actually a thing. There are real people out here who refuse to believe the earth is round and this is problematic. This conversation would likely start off with laughs and jeers but quickly turn ugly when the flat-earther suggests you’re stupid for allowing yourself to be brainwashed by live footage from outer space, actual satellite images and scientific research. It’s only a matter of time before this debate transforms into a full on brawl and somebody ends up in the ER.

    flat earth
    image: theverge.com

    If you can say “nigger/nigga,” why can’t I?-
    Why are we still having this discussion? I mean, really. We’ve only been talking about this for the last 60 years. You need to be more concerned about your twisted obsession with wanting to say that word. What is it in you that just cannot accept that there is a word born out of hatred that you should not use? Even more so, why does it bother you that a marginalized group of people have taken the power from an otherwise derogatory word and transformed it into a term of endearment. If you cannot understand that this does not involve you, you have bigger problems than using the “N word.” You’ve been warned.

    Wiggers
    What are you?-
    What do you mean, ‘what am I?’ What are you? I’m a human being who is minding my own business and not walking around challenging other people on their ethnicity. Biracial and multiethnic people do not owe it to you to satisfy your curiosity about the realities that exist outside of Mayberry. I’m sorry if your limited understanding of the world leaves you confused and intrigued. Find a travel agent and book yourself a trip to another zip code. And while we’re on the topic , ‘no, you cannot touch my hair.’

    Some accidents in life are preventable. Hopefully, this guide will help you avoid conversation calamities in the New Year.

    #AskMe Tees spark thoughtful and meaningful conversations about important and fun topics but we cannot keep up with the shenanigans and tomfoolery of habitual line crossers. Simply put, there isn’t a t-shirt for every conversation. So, we created this. For the Silo, Ayanna Smith. 

    AskMe Tshirt

    Ayanna Smith is the founder of #AskMe Tees, the award-winning Escape Lounge breakout games in Washington, D.C., and Ridlz. She is brutally honest, sharp-tongued, quick-witted and hard to embarrass, yet philanthropic, service-oriented and deeply compassionate. Between her budding business ventures and family, she has a lot to talk about!

    ‘Paws Off My Waterhole!’ Some Thoughts On The Study Of Hierarchies

    Who benefits, and how, from the operation of human social hierarchies?

    This article from Michael W. Diehl looks at social and economic inequality and the need to asses the costs and benefits that accrue to persons of varying status in social hierarchies.

    This “behavioral ecology” has historically been concentrated on food selection between classes or statuses. Has ancient competition for food resulted in modern human social and economic equality? Read on by clicking on the blue image below. CP

    Click me to read more!
    Click me to read more!

    Supplemental- Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs motivational model

    The Strength Of The Past And Its Great Might

    Within the last generation, archaeology has undergone a major transformation, developing from an independent small-scale activity, based upon museums and a few university departments, into a large-scale state organization based upon national legislation.

    Dreamer by Thomas Dodd Photography

    This has entailed an increase in resources on an unprecedented scale, and has drastically changed the profile of archaeology, which is now firmly fixed within the political and national domains. Moreover, decision making within the discipline has shifted from museums and university departments towards various new national agencies for the conservation and protection of the cultural heritage.

    The consequences of this development for the discipline as a whole had remained largely unnoticed until …..click here to read the complete electronic essay by Kristian Kristiansen University of Gothenburg.

    Also available via our friends at academia.edu