Reelection = Reality – Expectations | Hidden Jobs | The Teenagers Crusade

“Life is growth. You grow or you die.”

“Like books, sports give people a sense of having lived other lives, of taking part in other people’s victories. And defeats.”

“But that’s the nature of money. Whether you have it or not, whether you want it or not, whether you like it or not, it will try to define your days. Our task as human beings is not to let it.”

“I’d tell men and women in their mid twenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. Even if you don’t know what that means, seek it. If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you’ve ever felt.”

– Phil Knight, Shoe Dog. Shoe Dog is one of our favorite books on entrepreneurship. Phil Knight is the co-founder of Nike who was the commencement speaker at Daily Pnut’s publisher’s business school graduation.

Reelection = Reality – Expectations: Canadians will go to the polls this October to elect their country’s leaders for the next four years. Current prime minister Justin Trudeau swept into office in 2015 on a wave of optimism. But judging from the less-than-pleased mood of voters in town hall meetings, who have been grilling Trudeau on a gamut of topics from immigration to housing affordability, he should be gearing up for a pretty ugly reelection campaign. Angry citizens have slammed the prime minister for bungling the construction of pipelines, breaking promises to respect the right of indigenous groups, ignoring a pledge to balance the budget and allowing too many immigrants into the country.

In one stunning exchange at a town hall in Saskatchewan, a province in western Canada where Trudeau is in trouble, a woman asked him about Muslim Sharia law and Saudi Arabian oil imports. She then accused him of “working for your globalist partners” to betray the country. “What do we do with traitors in Canada, Mr. Trudeau? We used to hang them, hang them for treason,” she told the gobsmacked prime minister.

Opinion polls are showing Trudeau’s center-left Liberals are barely ahead of their rivals. Party insiders admit privately they could lose their majority in the House of Commons, which could crimp the government’s ability to govern. A pollster stated the obvious: “The next election is going to be a referendum on Justin Trudeau…and whether or not people think he has performed.”

The Teenagers Crusade: Tens of thousands of teenage activists are part of an environmental protest movement that has gained force across Europe over the past several weeks. Young people are using social media to gather in large numbers, without a lot of apparent preparation. The demonstrations take a different shape in different countries. In Germany students have protested on Fridays, communicating primarily through the messaging app WhatsApp. In Belgium they organize on Facebook; thousands of students in Brussels have skipped school on four consecutive Thursdays. 16-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg has drawn worldwide attention by calling for school strikes to raise awareness of global warming. At this month’s gathering in Davos she scolded political and economic leaders for not doing enough to curb the rise in carbon emissions. (NYT)

Rome’s Repetitive Recession: Italy’s economy has fallen into recession for the third time in a decade. It has been shrinking steadily since the rightwing League party formed a coalition with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. Analysts blamed much of the slump on the running battle between Rome and Brussels over the coalition’s plans to increase its budget deficit and stimulate the economy with a range of tax cuts and spending increases. Growth rates across the eurozone continue to weaken, likely forcing Italy to have to rewrite its growth forecasts for 2019, and prompting one analyst to say: “Italy is going to have to face up to some real problems.” (Guardian)

Additional reads:

• Matteo Salvini mocks move to tackle racism in Italian football: Interior minister says officials have ‘Richter scale for booing’ after threat to halt matches (Guardian)
• Huge cocaine shipment swapped with salt to catch traffickers: Largest drugs haul in Italy in 25 years comes after sting operation involving Colombia and Spain (Guardian)
• Wikileaks takes a swipe at the famously secretive Vatican ($, WaPo)

Other Global News

• Could You Last 11 Days Without the Internet? Tonga Finds Out the Hard Way (NYT, $)
• Brexit: Unilever stockpiles Ben & Jerry’s and Magnum ice creams: Unilever has said it is stockpiling Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and Magnum bars ahead of the UK’s departure from the European Union.(BBC)
• A Visit with the Taliban in Afghanistan: More than 17 years after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, the country is still at war. The Afghan army is weak, a resurgent Taliban is mounting fresh attacks and new peace negotiations do not include Kabul. Peace remains a distant goal. (Spiegel)
• Man evades capture for 15 years by using fingerprint implants: Drug trafficker who cut and burned skin to insert implants arrested near Madrid (Guardian)
• The city with no homeless on its streets (BBC)

India’s Missing Jobs: India’s national elections are due to happen this year, probably sometime in May. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is hoping for another five year term, but the populace might think he hasn’t done enough so far to fulfill his 2014 promise of more jobs. Perhaps that’s why the government didn’t want the latest jobs report to be released. It was leaked anyway, and it isn’t good. On Thursday an independent Indian newspaper reported some findings, including that the unemployment rate has hit a 45 year high. Critics accused the government of trying to keep the report hidden, and two of Modi’s economic advisers resigned in an apparent protest. The leader of the opposition party in the national Congress wrote on Twitter: “NoMo Jobs!…the leaked job creation report card reveals a National Disaster.”

Modi once looked unbeatable, but bubbling dissatisfaction with his job performance has meant he is facing a much closer election contest. Any bad news on the employment front is likely to hurt him. Economists suggest several factors are to blame for the worsening unemployment under Modi’s leadership, including less investment in the rural economy, bad droughts, struggles in the manufacturing sector and the negative effects of the prime minister’s 2016 decision to suddenly replace most of India’s currency, which resulted in severe cash shortages. In response Modi’s defenders point to India’s economy, which has been growing at the enviable rate of 7 percent for several years.

President Trump’s Aversion to Intelligence: Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was “stunned” by public comments President Trump made on Wednesday when he chastised top US intelligence chiefs after they had testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday and disputed several of his claims about his foreign policy successes. Albright told CNN’s John Berman that she “was fascinated by what happened (on Tuesday) with the lineup of all (the intelligence officials) and talking about what they know from the fact that they’re doing a lot of research, that they understand it… I worked for presidents that actually were interested in knowing what was going on and knew what the role of the intelligence community is and was.” Trump had tweeted that the intel chiefs were “naive”, and suggested they should “go back to school” for disagreeing with his assessments of potential threats to the US from North Korea, Iran, Syria and Russia. (CNN) Additional read: Trump considering Herman Cain (a former pizza chain executive) for Fed board seat, official says (Reuters)

Other American News & Super Bowl Sunday

• One Lawyer, One Day, 194 Felony Cases (NYT, $)
• In pictures: Polar vortex strikes North America: Temperatures have plunged to -30C (-22F) and below in parts of North America as extreme cold weather known as a polar vortex strikes the region.(BBC)
• Jury Awards Sen. Rand Paul More Than $580,000 In Damages After Attack By Neighbor (NPR)
• From books to bullets: inside Amazon’s push to ‘defend’ America(Guardian)
• With helicopters and dogs, massive Super Bowl security in Atlanta(Reuters)
• The NFL is 70% black, so why is its TV coverage so white?: This Sunday’s Super Bowl on CBS will be broadcast by a team of competent professionals. They just won’t be representative of the sport they’re covering (Guardian)
• Super Bowl: 33 arrested for sex trafficking in Atlanta in run-up to game: Four victims have been rescued, authorities say, as more than 600 DHS officials will be in the city on Sunday for protection(Guardian)

• Was C.T.E. Stealing His Mind? A Gunshot Provided the Answer: Jason Hairston played briefly in the N.F.L., hunted with Donald Trump Jr. and owned a wildly successful hunting gear and apparel company. But he increasingly worried about a degenerative brain disease. (NYT, $)

We quit Facebook last  year and it was a great decision. We spend much less time scrolling through feeds and we have the confidence that Facebook isn’t monitoring our every move. We can agree with this study that “Facebook users who quit the social network for a month feel happier” (TechCrunch) Death of the private self: how fifteen years of Facebook changed the human condition: In 2004, the social network site was set up to connect people. But now, with lives increasingly played out online, have we forgotten how to be alone? (Guardian) An Anti-Facebook Manifesto, by an Early Facebook Investor (NYT, $) All digital devices have eyes now: “The doorbells have eyes: The privacy battle brewing over home security cameras” (WaPo, $)

• Historian berates billionaires at Davos over tax avoidance: Rutger Bregman tells panel that the real issue is the rich not paying their fair share (Guardian)
• Nearly half of US adults have cardiovascular disease, study says(CNN)
• How to plan your day to get the best out of your brain: Our brains work differently as the day progresses – so should you schedule tricky tasks accordingly? (BBC) This is why Pnut’s publisher doesn’t like making difficult decisions in the evening. According to a friend, the tactful way to delay a decision in the evening is to say “I’d like to sleep on this decision.”
• He Swallowed a Toothpick. It Could Have Killed Him.: For several weeks, a young athlete’s symptoms stumped doctors, despite tests and scans. Unnoticed in a sandwich or wrap, toothpicks can do a surprising amount of damage in the digestive tract, and beyond. (NYT, $)
• Gym Class Is So Bad, Kids Are Skipping School to Avoid It: Not only does P.E. do little to improve physical fitness, but it can also lead to truancy and other disciplinary problems. (Atlantic) We really enjoyed our gym class, and we think kids need more activity, so we disagree with the premise of this essay.
• How Girl Scout cookies captured the heart of America: Thin mints, Samoas, and more, explained. (Vox)

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