cannuck

Here is a 10 year old assessment of the economy of Gaza https://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/MNA/Factsheet_Gaza_ENG.pdf Until the current war, I don't think anything changed. Essentially this place (and all of Palestine) lived on handouts from other countries as it produced next to nothing. The world simply paid the residents to produce more residents and then shelled out billions a year to house, feed and service them. They were a prime target for Iran to control, as they did, but what is the path forward to make this place truly sustainable????

No wings at all, so it should not be able to fly. The partisan political process survives because it keeps the ignorant population occupied thinking one or the other can do something or wants to do something that neither has ever done: find and fix the real problems. Our problem is similar to what has happened around the globe: we have given Bay Street/Wall Street/Casino Capitalism free reign to re-distribute wealth without adding any value - thus de-funding Main Street. How is that? Why would you want to take the risk of investing capital in developing new products and services that takes a lot of time and skill when you can instead take a bunch of "market money" and inflate the value of an equity by purchasing control and cashing in on an M&A deal in just a short time with near zero risk?

bitcoin or any other crypto is literally worth nothing. It is the geek world's invasion into the finance world's "synthetic instruments" and are little different from derivatives. The real question should be why are "we" allowing any of the above to exist, never mind be traded?

IMHO it is important to remember that ethnic cleansing happened to the Jews of Israel 2000 years ago, and once again 80 years ago, so this pendulum swings both ways. One thing that has come to bother me is the Iranian terrorists of Hamas celebrating their victory with 100:1 ration of released prisoners and restoration of a full stream of foreign aid that will once again enrich Hamas as it uses that windfall to re-equip. Gazans could have stopped this war dead in its tracks by turning their back on Hamas in December of '23 - instead they chose to shelter terrorists within their communities protecting them from detection and earning endless international sympathy for their "civilian" losses. I am not saying I agree with ethnic "cleansing" of Palestinians or Israelis - just bringing up how the situation on the ground is not one sided as portrayed by each side.

There is of course a constant change in climate, and based on us building economies that expected no change you might call it a "crisis". But that is a problem far, far less that the REAL crisis about which few people ever speak: pollution of our water. In my first forray into resource recovery going back nearly 40 years we learned that Germany alone was dumping about 150,000 tonnes/month of high level industrial waste into the North Sea. MANY countries did/do any better. What we also found was that national governments worked hand in hand with organized crime to make toxic and hazardous waste "go away". The criminal enterprises "owned" their political benefactors. Ever wonder why it has been endlessly studied but never really DONE anything about?? Follow the gold. Top of the list is to fix the problem that has killed of about 25% of the phytoplankton - mostly due to the chemistry of plastics and physical presence of microplastics. THIS is what absorbs far, far more CO2 than any forest or swamp - but without the biota the capacity to remove carbon from the water - that absorbs if from the atmosphere - and then release the oxygen we need - simply will not happen. Emitting less CO2 by villifying carbon is only for the benefit of those who would take a paycheque from trying to tell you this, or moreso those who make billions selling you BEVs so you can keep on doing more of the things that screwed up our environment in the first place.

Why would you want to "get immigrants"????? The place is totally screwed up from the irresponsible and mindless flood of inappropriate and incompatible cultures over the last decade.

Exactly my point. Our brilliant leadership had the right thing handed to them for our country to survive. Instead of embracing it they decided to empty the slums and jails of third world because "growth is good". China is the only country with the collective intelligence to actually do something about it.

Once again those same government regulations merely facilitate doing business as usual that is not in any way sustainable. Problem #1 that nobody seems to have the brains or balls to deal with is population. We live on a nice couple billion supportable planet that we have allowed to bloat to 8.2 Bn and counting ever faster by each day. Regardless of what we as a species do or do not contribute to pollution of our environment it is the explosion in our numbers that will soon make life miserable and unsustainable for us on this tiny planet. Instead of implementing population controls what do we do? Build millions of BEVs to run back and fourth between the dowtown office, urban home and cottages at the lake and spend trillions towards sending a probe to Mars to see how we can screw that place up too.

That is a valid question. The answer is: "politics" = but not so much regional as on a global scale. There is no question that climate is changing - as it has done for billions of years - but there is an opportunity for an economically competitive advantage by replacing nuclear fears with the carbon bugaboo. It was so easy as media has been (often correctly) exposing the horrible track record on environmental damage of the oil production and petrochem industry so the dirty work (sorry for the pun) was mostly done. Once the Euroweenie realized they had used up their easy oil and uncle Vlad had them by the balls to keep on keeping on it was an easy play to demonize the industries they were beholden to and move the market into a new space where there was no massive advantage to oil producing competitive nations. Once left leaning and thoughtless governments started playing off the UN led book and primed the "climate science" pump with a bit of cash, every basket weaving student could switch from inclusive studies to the even more lucrative "climate science" field with ultra low barriers of entry. What the truly ignorant "climate scientists" completely miss is that the path to sustainability can only come by doing LESS of what is causing our very real sustainability crisis, not devising more elaborate, more costly and more polluting ways to do more of what is the real problem. No question that the wrong approach is "drill baby drill" but anyone with a half a brain could easily realize the using massive amounts of immature and inappropriate technology to flood our streets and landfills with un-recyclable wind generator blades to charge incredibly polluting and not yet recyclable toxic batteries is equally inept. What is far, far worse is the shifting our attention to the so easy target of carbon from Big Oil means we are giving a pass to the plastic industries that are poisoning the very biota that extracts and fixes carbon and releases the oxygen that feed the start of the entire food chain and provide us with the oxygen we breathe. THAT is where our very existence will very soon come to an end.

It's not unique to USA as Canada and the rest of the world have as much addiction to alcohol and other drugs - a cultural acceptance that goes back centuries. It is a responsibility to each and ever nation and person. Countries try to limit some of their addictions by making it illegal to import and trade in such substances - and the US has indeed done that. Where they have failed is in securing their borders - and we have been complicit in providing a welcome and unimpeded road for entry of people and drugs into their country. They have every right to do whatever they think is appropriate to stem this flow, and that is what they seem to think they are doing.

I for one am delighted to see Trump's tariffs. To start with: he is responsible for the US economy, not ours. We have been too lazy, stupid, greedy and/or ignorant to revert from a diverse manufacturing economy (70 years ago) to hewers of wood and drawers of water (and oil) that we sell with no value added into the US economy. Outside of the US auto industry in ON, we have let our industries go from independent to branch plant to closed. Instead of investing in Main Street we have put our meager money and trust in Bay Street as Wall Street had instructed. I am insulted daily when I leave the counter of my primary industrial supplier when the person on the other side bids me farewell with "thank you for buying Canadian", and I have to remind him that almost everything in their massive catalogue was made in China, USA or Mexico, not Canada. Instead of developing an economy that exploits our resource wealth to fund value added businesses within our borders, Instead of promoting Canadian entrepreneurs to create wealth we instead scrape the very bottom of the international barrier and bring in millions of people who have absolutely no other purpose in life except to provide cheap labour to those who import products and services that prey upon Canadian consumers. Those same NACs are here because they know they can bring over the rest of their family to enjoy a free ride on our sick care and social services or play the games to exploit their student visa status to enter the USA. The truly ignorant and arrogant new US President is doing us a potentially great service if it will make us look at where we came from, where we are and where we are going as a result of being passive dolts along for the ride.

Evert time government decides to do something...A.NYTHING to choose winners and losers in the business world you can count on two guaranteed things: they will totally f*ck up anything they touch and the kickbacks will be at least 10% of what flows out of our bank....oops, our grandchildrens' tax accounts.

Pipeline intrusion detection is a fiber optic cable "listening" to sound. It is probably more in line with what submariners do than any other process. At a military max performance level, I expect they could clearly hear footsteps and many more things and identify what and maybe who the signature fit. When you say "nukes" I assume you mean dirty bombs, but there are (at least where when my Father instructed on them) battlefield nukes that could indeed fit in a man sized tunnel. Let's hope they never get hold of such a thing.

Have worked a bit with pipeline intrusion detection technology. From 50km away, the good stuff can locate source of noise within a couple of meters and even identify the type and size of approaching vehicles/equipment and then applied force of the intruders's ground engagement tool. Hamas/Hez/Iran could indeed detonate a small nuke on/within their borders but I can tell you with certainty that Israel excells at building and using this technology (behind only UK)

At 10:1 or so for what could be mostly Hamas operatives or combatants, the offset for Israeli hostages is not a great deal. Once more: Hamas celebrating their victory.

The Athabasca Oil Sands are hardly unique. There are many other "uncoventional reserves" with similar density and sulphur levels all over the planet. ALL of these sell for a considerable discount from reference crudes. There is no one price for "oil", just an industry agreed reference for each production region. What is different very about the Athabasca deposit (it stretches darn near to MB) is that if you call it "oil" it is the largest contiguous reservoir in the world - possibly greater than the rest of the world's petroleum hydrocarbon reserves combined. Somewhat unique is that significant proportion of the deposits are close enough to the surface around the Ft. McMurray - Fort McKay region to be mined in open pits. What is missing so far for the MUCH larger deeper portion is a practical and sustainable way to get it out of the groiund. In the early days there was even thoughts of using a small thermonuclear device to make a glass lined (from melted sand) hot pocket that could be pumped. That one didn't go ahead...obviously. Where "we" as a country, province and industry have genuinely screwed up is allowing heavy oil to be shipped by rail (as "ralibit" and pipeline (as "dillbit"), As I believe I mentioned earlier, we should allow export only of synthetic crude ("syncrde) that can not only go into a pipeline but can be fed to pretty much any "light oil" refinery. THEN we get maximum value from the resource due to value added.

Hey, this is a family website. Don't say such things.

This is correct. However: it is not just about getting AB Bitumen to tidewater, it is about taking dilbit off of incredibly dangerous rail and moving it far more safely. If anyone actually gave a flying purple f*** about the environmental impact they would make it illegal to ship dilbit (dilluted bitumen with very difficult characteristics if spilled) and do a full step of value added by upgrading to synthetic crude (as does Syncrude, GCOS/Suncor, CNRL and Shell Scotford) producing a much safer and easier product to ship that is ideal feedstock for conventional refineries.

Pretty sure that was all budgeted in the $8Bn Kinder Morgan would have spent. It is not their first pipeline. Sadly few readers could even begin to imagine how corrupt Ottawa is - regardless of what party is in power.

This thread should have been titled: "The Hamas Resupply Agreement". The aid that has been flowing daily into Gaza was mostly hijacked by Hamas and surplus sold to Gazans at extremely high cost. The UN has been proven totally incompetent in delivering aid to Gazans in need and upping the flow to 600 trucks a day means that weapons and munitions will be flowing in at a stunning rate. After all, the thousand or so combatants being released will need supplies, won't they?

Oh, Grasshopper, I have to take you to task...again. They are 100% competent at executing their actual plans. Do you have an idea how much porkfat drips out of a barrel overrunning by $20++ BILLION???? There are chiefs and band counsellors smiling all of the way to their offshore bank accounts with all of the generosity we taxpayers used to buy their obligations to the LPC.

You have no idea just how much the ROC is enslaved by the Feds to pander to Quebec. It goes miles beyond any "special carvout" - it is a blatant abuse of the rrights and privileges of every level of government in the whole country.

There was a Western separatist movement, and with the disaster inflicted upon us by the East putting the Little Turd in power for 10 years it may well rejuvenate. Problem is: without AB/SK/MB energy there is no way Ottawa could afford Quebec.

She willingly and actively participated in the wanton destruction of Canadian culture and economic well being, ran up an unsustainable debt on our grandchildrens' backs and stood proudly beside an arrogant fool who made Canada the laughing stock within global diplomacy for 10 years. Her intellectual acuity has already been demonstrated.

while I certainly won't have a dog in this race, I do think Christi Freespend really deserves the job to be PM for a day. She earned that right by standing up to the Little Turd. Worth mentioning: while Jughead propped up his government until his pension was fully vested he put us in a position of having no leadership and no effective government going into a most critical phase of Can/USA relations. His personal greed also could result in someone who was not even elected or possibly has never actually run for office becoming PM.