RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. TUESDAY, JANUARY 6, 2026. To start with this is the fifth anniversary of the wild and crazy attempt to overturn the 2020 US presidential election in Washington, DC — at and in which President Donald Trump was both present and an involved observer (or much more?).

I may not entirely agree with Robert Reich that January 6, 2021 was the “most shameful day in American history.” But Mr Reich is altogether on the money when he declares “We will never forget, and we will not let the nation or the world forget” what happened to Democracy in America five years ago today.

Meanwhile, the second President Donald Trump’s kidnaping of President Maduro in Venezuela on January 3, 2026 has prompted a reaction from retired US Army General Barry R McCaffrey, that summarizes a lot of what I feel about the 45th and 47th president of the USA myself.

On January 3, in the immediate wake of the US Armed Forces intervention that successfully “captured” (officialese) or “kidnaped” (activist) the (much criticized) Venezuelan president, General (ret) McCaffrey posted on Twitter/X : “Brilliant military operation to seize and arrest Maduro. Good outcome. Zero authorization by Congress. Trump says we will take the oil. Take charge of Venezuela. States President Petro of Colombia ‘better watch his ass.’ Like gangsters.”

On January 4, turning to another ingredient of the current Trump Distraction Syndrome, General McCaffrey posted : “Seize Greenland? A NATO ally. We’re already there in a NATO base. These Trump threats are the actions of a lawless US regime. Where is Congress? Art I of our Constitution.”

Finally, on January 5 General McCaffrey returned to the note on which his January 3 post had ended : “Trump repeated threats to seize Greenland are shameful. Deadly harmful. Comical. He is destroying our global alliances. We sound like a gangster nation.”

There is, I think, more than one side to President Trump that quite nicely fits this “gangster nation” brand. Or as others have observed, in the new age of the second Trump administration American foreign policy is explicitly embracing the ancient (and heretofore long discredited) slogan “might is right.” (As opposed to the higher minded “rule of law.”)

The Barry R McCaffrey who has lately been talking about the Trumpian gangster nation, some will urge, is living proof that not all senior officers of the US military are right-wing Republicans. The now retired Lieutenant General McCaffrey has been on “four combat tours” in the Vietnam and Gulf wars. He has “Three Purple Heart awards.” He also “served in President Bill Clinton’s Cabinet as the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.” And he is an (American left TV channel) “MS NOW nat security analyst” in his current incarnation.

Meanwhile, as an example of the kind of recent American weakness that President Trump’s new Donroe Doctrine adventures in the Western Hemisphere are meant to hide from our direct gaze, note the Twitter/X-posted chart showing that “Of the 10 countries with the largest stock markets by market cap, the US performed 8th best in 2025.”

(And as yet another feather in PM Mark Carney’s cap, the country whose stock markets did best in 2025, on this reckoning, is Canada. In fact over 2025 values on Canada’s stock markets rose by more than double the rise in the Trumpian Golden Age USA — 17.3% increase in USA vs 36.5% in Canada. So much for the hard-right conservative/Conservative “Canada’s broken” critique of the Carney Liberals.)

Another very final vaguely related note on recent Twitter/X postings comes from the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, on January 1, 2026. It offers congratulations to the newly sworn-in New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. And it reads : “In the face of hateful smears, anti-Muslim slurs and disinformation, @ZohranKMamdani remained defiant and dignified. His response — meeting hate with hope and unity — inspired New Yorkers and many beyond. I wish him every success as he takes office.”

In Canada especially we are bound to note the current similarity between the mayors of London and New York. Long ago New York succeeded London as a financial capital of the anglophone economic universe and beyond. But the two cities remain two slices of fresh crusty bread for the same transatlantic sandwich. US foreign policy is bound to be caught up in the continuing ties between New York and London. And London is clearly not in the Western Hemisphere. Which is just one more example of the many many troubles with the new American foreign policy vision, proposed by whatever it is that lies at the bottom of the failing Trump II experiment.

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. MONDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2025. Santa has now come and gone, here as elsewhere. We have a few last moments to contemplate our own record for the fourth and final quarter of the very fateful year 2025.

For us here on the northwest shore of the Great Lake Ontario, one very big event for Fri, Oct 24 — Sat, Nov 1, 2025 was the Toronto Blue Jays narrowly losing baseball’s World Series in the seventh and final game on Nov 1.

At the start of the 2025 season almost no one even guessed wildly at this prospect. As early as March 26, however, our own sporting life specialist Rob Sparrow had presented at least one “best-case scenario for 2025.”

It read : “The Jays sneak into the postseason and finally win a game, breaking their nearly decade-long drought and make a run in the playoffs … That’s the dream.”

Which did come true in this case. And in tribute to its on-the-money best-case scenario we’re somewhat crazily treating the Sparrow’s piece from March as the first item in our year-end selections, for the fourth and final quarter of the fateful and crazy year now about to end!

(And this reminds us that back in the first few weeks of June 2025 the Edmonton Oilers didn’t quite manage to take the ancient top trophy of professional hockey away from the Florida Panthers either. Here again a Canadian team did not finally bring the championship hardware of professional sport in North America back to the home and native land. Yet here as well Canada was playing at the top! Bigger things can only lie ahead … )

Meanwhile our somewhat personalized list of favourite half-dozen counterweights pieces for the fourth quarter of 2025 (suitably amended to allow Rob Sparrow’s spring piece on the Jays into the autumn fold) stands as follows :

(1) Mar 26th 2025 /Oct 4, 2025. By Rob Sparrow. “Blue Jays 2025: The Final Flight of Vladdy & Bo…or Another Crash Landing”. (See above.) …

Read the rest of this page »

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2025. Santa is almost on his way, in these parts of planet earth at least. And late this afternoon of the day before Christmas Eve (which we still do commemorate in these parts, as a cultural if not exactly religious event) we counterweights editors met in the first-floor board room.

Over some seasonal good cheer we chose these half-dozen favourite postings from the third quarter of 2025 — a time when (to us at any rate) Trump’s USA seemed to be slowly falling, while Carney’s Canada was slowly rising (albeit of course with only about 11.5% of the current US population, in an only slightly larger national geography) :

(1) Jul 16th, 2025. “Watching made-in-Canada US Christmas movies to keep cool in long hot wildfire summer of 2025 is not something only Trump voters do in USA.” Starting on a light-hearted (if not entirely non-political) note — to help beat the deep summer heat. Probing the likes of Merritt Patterson from Whistler, BC and Trevor Donovan from Mammoth Lakes, CA, in such vehicles as Jingle Bell Princess (2021), “allegedly about the US State of Maine” but “shot in North Bay, Ontario (Canada).”

(2) Jul 24th, 2025. “Two current answers to “How did Donald Trump actually manage to get elected (twice) as president of the USA?” Some say the president’s “swagger is GONE.” Others urge he “is trying to concoct a fantasy world in which prices are ‘all down’.” Still others argue “he’s mentally disturbed” … all this yet again raises the question of how Donald Trump actually managed to get elected as president … Two different answers … (1) Too many ignorant voters ???? (2) Reacting against indoctrination of youth by American education systems.”

Read the rest of this page »

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2025. By the start of the second quarter of 2025 here on the north shore of Lake Ontario, in ”northern North America”, the crazy Trump tariffs had set in globally (including 10% on the Heard and Macdonald Islands near Australia, inhabited only by penguins).

Meanwhile the second incarnation of President Donald Trump south of the Canadian border had made clear that, altogether impossibly as well as ridiculously, Mr Trump ultimately wanted Canada to become the 51st state of the USA — all along the 5,525 miles (8,891 km) from the St. Croix and Saint John rivers, to four of the five North American Great Lakes, to the 49th parallel of latitude, more or less culminating with the Peace Arch between Surrey, BC and Blaine, WA.

And after much deliberation on these last days of another year, we counterweights editors have concluded that our half dozen favourite counterweights posts in the second quarter of 2025 are :

(1) Apr 14th, 2025. By Randall White. “What Donald Trump’s (almost) latest Canada talk finally means north of the old undefended border.” Wherein Dr White opined : “My biggest personal problem with Donald Trump is that in his US presidential attitude to Canada he is effectively telling me that I do not exist. Canadian as a national identity separate from that of the United States (ie American) does not exist in his MAGA philosophy.”

(2) Apr 30th, 2025. “Early examination of entrails of 2025 Canadian federal election : New Democrats reduced to mere 7 seats but that + 169 Liberals gives a 176-seat majority in parliament!” PM Mark Carney did at least win win a minority government for his updated (and non-Trudeau) Liberals. As it has happened since, the New Democrats are not supporting the Liberals quite like Jagmeet Singh, 2022-2024. But as 2025 ends the Carney government now has 171 seats (where 172 is a bare majority), thanks to two Conservative MPs’ crossing the floor.

Read the rest of this page »

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2025. For Canada in some grand existential sense — as for much else in the contemporary global village — the great shadow event of 2025 has without doubt been the arrival of the even wilder and crazier Donald J. Trump II regime in the (alas) no longer great American republic next door.

(And much Canadian thinking on the current state of this disorder has been nicely summarized by Andrew Coyne, in his December 5, 2025 Globe and Mail column. Which nas now on December 16, 2025 been reposted by the irrepressible Robert Reich in Berkeley, CA as “The True Catastrophe of Trump, as seen from north of the border … A view from our neighbor.”)

In Canadian federal politics there was just one great story in the first four months of 2025 — down to the 45th General Election on Monday, April 28. This was the surprise salvation of the Liberal government in Ottawa, wrought by new leader and former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, who grew up in the aptly named Laurier Heights suburb of Edmonton, Alberta.

(And on April 28 the new Carney Liberals won 169 seats in a House where 172 seats constitutes a bare majority. As the year is about to end right now they have 171 seats, as a result of two floor crossings from the Poilievre Conservatives. For possible further prospects of this sort see “Energy minister says he’s getting ‘lots of inquiries’ about MPs crossing the floor … Sources say Tim Hodgson was involved in bringing Michael Ma over to Liberals.”)

Read the rest of this page »

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. MONDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2025. Robert Reich’s “Sunday thought” yesterday set the stage for my current further reflections on the USA next door, some 17 days before Christmas 2025.

(And I am using my father’s understanding of the universe as I mention this particular holiday in Toronto today. When asked by a local official what religion he was, during his later days on planet earth, he replied “Well I celebrate Christmas.” I’d note as well that he would almost certainly agree with George Orwell that the “whole point of Christmas is that it is a debauch — as it was probably long before the birth of Christ was arbitrarily fixed at that date.”)

In any case Professor (now retired) Reich’s thought for this past Sunday, December 7, 2025 — all the way from the American wonderland of Berkeley, California — was headlined “Really, truly, the end of Trump is near … MAGA is cracking up, but beware.”

Immediately following the “but beware” advice, I have particularly stumbled across the results of a recent Manhattan Institute poll of “Current GOP” (ie Republican Party) voters in the USA today. My first encounter with this poll came in a Dec 4, 2025 post on Twitter/X by a gentleman known as Heath Mayo.

I cite Mr. Mayo’s admirably concise three-sentence account of what it is about this poll that strikes him as worth some serious bewaring : “Over a third of GOP voters think the moon landing was faked and that the Holocaust was greatly exaggerated or didn’t happen as historians describe … Over 40% think 9/11 was likely an inside job … And more than half still think the 2020 election was rigged.”

(Who is Heath Mayo, you may ask? His crisp social media identification suggests an almost conservative persona : “Christian | Husband | Father | M&A Lawyer | Founder @Principles_1st.” A legal firm website offers more professional detail : “Heath Mayo is a corporate partner in the New York office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. His practice involves a wide range of merger and acquisition-related matters, including cross-border transactions, spin-offs, divestitures, carve-out IPOs, private equity transactions and joint ventures, as well as governance advice and activism defense across a wide range of industries.” Finally his recent social media posts strike me as sensible enough, and possibly even the work of a closet Republican progressive.)

Read the rest of this page »

RANDALL WHITE. FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2025. Some recent seasonal advice from the estimable www.independent.co.uk started me thinking.

It came in a “Health Check” from Emilie Lavinia, Fitness and Wellbeing Editor, on “The true cost of drinking alcohol” — as you spread your glad tidings of good cheer over the next 30 days.

Ms Lavinia is worth quoting : “As The Independent’s fitness and wellbeing editor, I’m seeing more and more instances of ‘party anxiety’ as we move into the festive season. According to the charity Alcohol Change 1 in 5 people in the UK report not drinking alcohol at all but for those who do, there are grey areas that can seriously impact physical and mental health.”

The Fitness and Wellbeing Editor’s late November 2025 piece goes on :”The season of celebration brings with it social pressures, excess and sometimes, just drinking for the sake of it. For many people, drinking alcohol often feels like a negative experience — something they don’t want to do or something they dread.”

I know Ms Lavinia’s advice does ring true for readers today who feel they must navigate a few too many seasonal celebrations over the last few weeks of 2025. But it also made me think of a vaguely related piece from long ago by George Orwell.

This was first published in the “democratic socialist political magazine” Tribune, on December 20, 1946 — the second Christmas after the end of the Second World War. (During which Home Guard Sergeant George Orwell had watched the nighttime fires of the London Blitz from the roof of BBC Broadcasting House.)

Read the rest of this page »

RANDALL WHITE. FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2025. This past Monday Carleton Place, Ontario journalist David Krayden posted a Twitter/X piece on “Why was Mark Carney Booed at Canada’s Grey Cup?”

I have not myself delved into any TV or other footage that shows this booing taking place. I take the word of Mr Krayden and others that it did in some degree happen!

I am most persuaded myself by a response from my counterweights editors colleagues :

“And then there’s (maybe more relevant) history. No one, it has been said, ever admitted to voting for William Lyon Mackenzie King (who had a PhD from Harvard). And yet he remains by some distance the longest serving Canadian PM — 1921–1926, 1926–1930, 1935–1948.”

(1) Mackenzie King in the 1920s 1930s, and 1940s and Mark Carney in the 2020s (and 2030s and 2040s ??)

There are, it seems to me, a number of apt comparisons between PM Mackenzie King in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and PM Mark Carney in the 2020s.

I’m not entirely alone in this opinion. Last night on TV I heard Andrew Coyne raise the celebrated (if not quite exact) Mackenzie King quotation “conscription if necessary but not necessarily conscription,” to describe PM Carney’s recent political maneuvering (especially on oil pipelines).

Like Carney, Mackenzie King was well educated. He attended the University of Toronto and the University of Chicago, and finally earned a PhD from Harvard. There is also arguably some quite vague half-similarity between the family backgrounds of the two men.

Read the rest of this page »

RANDALL WHITE. FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2025. We have had an early almost sudden and surprisingly serious snowstorm in these parts. It somehow seems to fit these several days in early-mid November.

Through such events as Indigenous Veterans Day (November 8) and Remembrance Day (November 11), our official public life still tries to remember and show suitable gratitude to all those who have given their lives, so we Canadian people can live safely in our “free and democratic society.”

(As finally legally enshrined in the Constitution Act, 1982, by agreement of nine provincial legislatures and the federal parliament.)

Other years I have sometimes gone to the neighbourhood commemoration ceremony, presided over by the executive of the local Canadian Legion (“Baron Byng” branch of the Ontario Command in this case). The sudden surprisingly deep early snowfall — albeit quickly enough melting with the more seasonal and warmer actual Remembrance Day 2025 — made this an unattractive option for an aging body.

I was nonetheless well enough served by my 65 inch TV, in a comfortable warm room whose only window is on an alley that doesn’t really show the snow.

Read the rest of this page »

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2025. Up here in the Canadian northern wilderness Tuesday, November 4, 2025 was a double-edged sword.

The main evening political entertainment on TV in Canada as in the United States was the first wave of US state and local elections since President Trump took office for his second term. Inevitably they were seen in many if not all minds as the first democratic electoral (as opposed to mere opinion polling) evidence on how well Trump II is doing, domestically.

At the same time, the 4PM ET (1PM PT etc) presentation of the (at last) 2025 Canadian federal budget in Parliament at Ottawa by The Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal Minister of Finance and National Revenue, was a suitable prelude to the subsequent evening burst of Democratic party victories in the USA, USA — especially but by no means exclusively in Virginia, New Jersey, New York City, and California.

As far as this particular bi-coastal quartet goes (V/NJ/NYC/CAL), the Trump press secretary response that it wasn’t surprising to see Democrats doing well in blue states and cities does bear some serious enough weight. On the other hand, the results in these (and even it becomes clearer many other non-blue) cases were more strongly Democratic than was widely expected.

Read the rest of this page »