Wednesday Night #2298

Stephen Lewis, humanitarian and former Ontario NDP leader, dies at 88
As news of the prominent humanitarian’s death spread Tuesday, politicians who knew him from his early days as leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party, grandmothers who worked with him in Africa, and Canadians inspired by his passionate, deeply personal calls for social justice all offered similar accounts of his humility and charity, as well as his ability to make someone feel seen in a room, to ask a question and then truly listen, however lofty his title.
Prime Minister Mark Carney paid tribute to Mr. Lewis for moving millions with his appeals for a compassionate and just society during his work as a member of the Ontario Legislature, leadership of the Ontario NDP and service as Canada’s United Nations ambassador.
In a statement, Mr. Carney said Mr. Lewis was a “pillar of compassionate leadership in Canadian democracy and a renowned global champion for human rights and multilateralism.”
Stephen Lewis, former Canadian ambassador to the UN and father of NDP leader Avi Lewis, dead at 88
As Sandy said elsewhere ” I guess knowing Avi was going to succeed him in politics gave him the OK to let go.”

Something positive to cheer about
Space: the final frontier 
Liftoff, Wednesday 1 April, no earlier than 6:24 p.m. EDT.
Live updates: Artemis II astronauts arrive at launch pad 39B in astrovan
Artemis II
This is the first crewed flight of NASA’s Artemis program and the first time since 1972 that humans have ventured to the moon. Onboard is Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, who will be the first non-American to fly to the moon and will make Canada only the second country in the world to send an astronaut into deep space.
NASA’s Artemis program, launched in 2017, has the ambitious goal to return humans to the moon and to establish a lunar base in preparation for sending humans to Mars.
Canada looks to lead in space technology as Artemis II prepares moon launch

More good news:
Trump, GOP leaders unveil plan to end DHS shutdown through Senate bill and reconciliation
Republican leaders in Congress and President Trump unveiled a plan Wednesday to end the partial government shutdown and fully fund the Department of Homeland Security, mirroring a framework that the Senate pursued last week before it was quickly batted down by House Republicans.

Cautious optimism from Doug Sweet
Quebec offers anglophones a place in the constitution. They’re not impressed
“I heard them,” Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette said of anglophone groups that complained his controversial Bill 1 left out English-speaking Quebecers.
Bowing to anglophone critics, Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette announced Wednesday that Quebec’s proposed constitution will recognize the community’s enshrined rights — and won’t bar public bodies from using taxpayer money to finance legal fights against Quebec laws.
Groups representing English-speaking Quebecers had complained they were left out of Bill 1 and that the court-challenge ban was an attempt to muzzle institutions such as English school boards and universities.
“I heard them. They told us: ‘Let us be recognized in Bill 1.’ And that’s what I’m doing,” Jolin-Barrette told reporters as he unveiled a series of amendments to the bill.

 Gulf War III
Trump’s address on Iran war tonight will lay out timeframe for ending conflict
(CBS) President Trump is delivering a prime-time address to update the nation on the war in Iran Wednesday night, as he predicts the operation will continue for a few more weeks and threatens to withdraw the U.S. from NATO.
Thirty-three days into Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. is already well within the four-to-six-week timeline that the president and his administration had laid out for the joint U.S.-Israeli operation. The president’s remarks Tuesday that the U.S. will leave Iran in “two or three weeks” would put the military conflict beyond the high-end estimate of six weeks, despite the president’s insistence that the war is ahead of schedule. Mr. Trump has said the war could end sooner if the two sides reach a deal.

Trump claims Iran wants a ceasefire, Iran calls remarks ‘false and baseless’
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday claimed that Iran’s president wanted a ceasefire ahead of his speech to the American people. Trump made the claim on his Truth Social website. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said Trump’s remarks were “false and baseless.”

Meanwhile as the goals of Israel and the US diverge, Israel continues to attack Lebanon
War-torn Lebanon is facing ‘fastest growing displacement crisis in the world,’ says international aid organization president
Israel has issued evacuation orders for large swaths of southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as Beirut’s southern suburbs. Only a small portion of them are staying in government-run public schools turned-shelters, while others stay with family or even in tents on the streets.
…Miliband decried the tiny country’s situation as a “silent emergency that is getting very little attention.”

Israel strikes Lebanon as Trump is set to deliver a speech on the Iran war
On Tuesday, Trump said he expected the conflict to be over in two to three weeks, adding, “we’ll be leaving very soon,” and promising gas prices would then “come tumbling down.”
Trump shrugged off what would happen to the largely blockaded Strait of Hormuz — where about a fifth of the world’s oil typically passes — saying, “we’re not going to have anything to do with it.” He said that it wouldn’t affect the U.S. and would be something for other countries to deal with.
Britain to host 35 countries for strait of Hormuz talks, says Starmer
US understood not to be invited directly to talks that will explore ways of reopening critical waterway

… Israel strikes Beirut’s coast as Europe urges de-escalation

From Peter Frise: Here is a really interesting episode of What’s Going on with Shipping.
Sailing out of the Persian Gulf via the Iranian Toll Booth | Strait of Hormuz Update 31 March 2026 shows closeups of the Iranian “toll booth” (the Ayatollah booyj”) setup to extort money for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

Canada/Quebec
Good move or security problems?
Finance minister to visit China this week as Canada aims to forge closer ties
François-Philippe Champagne’s trip follows up on PM’s visit in January
… China has suddenly become critical for many countries, including Canada, as U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade policies have alienated his country’s traditional allies, forcing them to look for new partnerships and increase collaboration with the world’s second-largest economy — though the relationship is not without its challenges. …
The NDP has a new leader. What does Avi Lewis’s arrival mean for the party?
Lewis steps into shoes of his grandfather, David Lewis, who led the party in the 1970s
Andrew Coyne: Crisis is coming, and voters may give the federal NDP another look
… These are the last of the good times for the Carney government. The global economy, under the strains imposed by the Iran war, is heading for the ditch. Trade talks with the U.S. are likely to fail. Secession referendums loom, with or without annexation campaigns.
In the chaos that is headed our way, more voters may be willing to give the NDP a look than is presently accounted for. Popular opinion has become detached from its partisan or ideological moorings. …
Canada-Quebec 2026 – Bill 21
Thanks to Andrew Caddell for this weeks’s column that gives an excellent summary of the issues involved in the Supreme Court hearing of last week The Supreme Court’s Bill 21 challenge – The Bill 21 case is complicated, to say the least, with multiple sections of the Constitution and Charter at play.
…The four days unfolded with a certain drama. Monday was the EMSB and other plaintiffs, Tuesday the Quebec government defending Bill 21, Wednesday and Thursday the interveners, kicked off by the Government of Canada, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta, followed by dozens of interveners, including my organization.
What appeared clear on the first day was the plaintiffs were loath to deal directly with the notwithstanding clause. To prove Canada is already a secular society, lawyers cited historical precedents dating back to 1774 and 1852.
The next day, Quebec pointed out Bill 21 was passed by a majority in the National Assembly, and shielded by the Notwithstanding Clause, so should not be challenged. … (See Long reads below for link)

As the Third Gulf War situation becomes ever murkier, we might take heart from the recent ruling on Trump’s ballroom.
Ballroom Bungle?
Judge Halts White House Ballroom Construction
A federal judge ordered construction of President Trump’s White House ballroom halted, saying work must come to a stop “unless and until Congress blesses this project.” Mr. Trump assailed the organization that sued over the project, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, calling it “a Radical Left Group of Lunatics” on social media.
Trump’s Ballroom Design Has Barely Been Scrutinized – Architects Say It Shows
The National Capital Planning Commission is scheduled on Thursday to take a final vote approving President Trump’s ballroom, clearing the last review for a major addition to the White House that was publicly unveiled in detail only in January. Last month, another panel led by the president’s allies, the Commission of Fine Arts, discussed the ballroom for 12 minutes before unanimously approving it.
Robert Reich chimes in: NO AUTHORITY – Radical thought: Trump is a steward for future generations, not an owner
The decision by Judge Leon puts the ballroom project on hold while the lawsuit continues. When a federal judge grants a preliminary injunction, it means that the judge views it likely that plaintiffs (in this case, the National Trust for Historic Preservation) will prevail on the merits of the case, and that allowing whatever is going on to continue (in this case, construction of Trump’s humongous 90,000-square-foot ballroom) will cause the plaintiffs irreparable harm.
And in Trump’s latest skirmish with SCOTUS, John Curtin‘s friend Alan Dershowitz predicts ‘victory for other side’ after Trump attends Supreme Court

Varia
Lost remains of French musketeer d’Artagnan may have been found in Dutch church
A fictionalized version of d’Artagnan, a hotheaded teenager who becomes the fourth musketeer, was the hero of Alexandre Dumas’ 1844 novel “The Three Musketeers.” But d’Artagnan was a real historical figure.
The skeleton of famed French musketeer Charles de Batz de Castelmore d’Artagnan may have been found in front of a church altar in the Dutch city of Maastricht, church officials and an archaeologist said on Wednesday.
Bloomberg suggests these Conversation Starters (not sure in what context, but good provocative topics)
– America’s biggest turning points aren’t really turning points. Events like 9/11 or Jan. 6 feel decisive, but history moves more slowly
While cycles of backlash are normal, they also make a clean break from Trump unlikely.
(See The Myth of the American Turning Point in Long reads below)
– Liberal institutions need to think more like their enemies. (See Long reads below for Red Teaming Would Fix Liberalism’s Crisis)
“Red teaming,” a tactic used in cybersecurity and the military, forces organizations to adopt an adversary’s perspective and expose their own blind spots. …liberal institutions have proven incapable of responding to rising threats let alone anticipating them. These institutions are invariably characterized by two things that leave them blind and helpless: institutional privilege and epistemic closure [holding fast to beliefs that are rooted in a false and insular reality despite their being outside evidence to the contrary of that belief].
– Catching criminals matters more than punishing them. Research shows the likelihood of consequences — not their severity — does most to deter crime, with leniency often outperforming harsher sentences.
– National capitalism has a blind spot. Larry Fink’s push to “grow with your country” fits the moment. But diversification means investing beyond your own borders, so keeping capital at home risks missing returns.
The war against PDFs is heating up – Will the file type survive the AI revolution?
It seems the fault lies with AI — The large language models underpinning generative AI are often bamboozled by PDFs, reading a page set in columns from left to right rather than top to bottom, say, or getting confused by headers and footers. Trouble parsing PDFs is one of the reasons AI chatbots occasionally “hallucinate”, generating nonsense.

Long reads
The Supreme Court’s Bill 21 challenge
The Bill 21 case is complicated, to say the least, with multiple sections of the Constitution and Charter at play.
The Myth of the American Turning Point
Donald Trump didn’t descend a golden escalator and transform America overnight. His rise reflected deep currents in US history — and moving on may take time.
‘No going back’ for next president as Trump makes US reversal ‘impossible’: analyst
Donald Trump has made life harder for his Oval Office successor with a series of changes that will likely be impossible to undo, an analyst claimed.
Red Teaming Would Fix Liberalism’s Crisis
The idea is simple: To fight a formidable adversary we need to think like the adversary