SpankyMcFarland

Come on now, do you believe any of that should take the best part of a year more? The time for straight, honest, open talk about the Tory defeat is now. He lost the election and in Australia he would have been gone in days at most after that. As I pointed out, Canadian parties tend to be way too deferential to their leaders and it’s high time we dumped that overboard.

The Tories have a persistent problem with tone. Since Mulroney they have rarely had a leader for long who looks like they’re enjoying themselves and can crack a joke or two. There were obvious messages to be pushing for the last ten years on fiscal prudence, corruption etc. but they couldn’t seem to do it with a smile. Then Poilievre doubled down on the creepy MAGA-esque stuff like crypto and convoys, and a level of snark suitable for here that actively repels many independent voters who might otherwise give his party a hearing. Perhaps such doom and gloom reflects where we are headed as a country but thank goodness it’s not a winning formula yet. And why are they going to wait so long to review his leadership? Do it now and get some honest discussion going. He blew a massive lead for reasons obvious to everybody else and deserves a heap of robust criticism. It’s like JT’s very long goodbye or Jean Chretien’s for that mattter. Canadian parties need to wake up and do the necessary in a much more timely fashion. I’m not saying get rid of him necessarily but at least have the talk and put the issue to bed.

In most conflicts one can see reprehensible acts committed by both sides. Gaza is no different. Pointing them out does not mean one supports either side.

Northern Ireland consists of six of the nine counties of the historic province of Ulster. The other three - Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan - are in the Republic of Ireland.

Our programs to mentor foreign doctors are laughably inadequate in terms of magnitude and are part of a medical establishment that is at best ambivalent, let’s say, as to whether they should be coming here at all. My local med school trains no GPs for my town any more. Sending my tax dollars to Egypt would make more sense.

Antisemitism in Arab countries is real but it’s the not the whole story here, of course. A person whose family has been killed, or whose land has been taken or whose olive grove has been destroyed hates the Israelis for reasons other than some nonsense they heard in the mosque. Yes, this is an ethnoreligious tribal conflict with many dimensions of bigotry etc. but both sides also have legitimate grievances stemming from real incidents.

The policy since 1967 has been to take the West Bank and it’s happening, piece by piece, for those with eyes to see. Every year more settlements are created. One interim goal is the 1.1 solution - as much as much of the West Bank as possible with as few Arabs as possible. For religious loonies like Gvir and Smotrich that’s probably not enough. Their kind won’t rest until the Palestinians are driven out in their entirety.

In the good old days of the Ottoman Empire, minorities across Europe were denied rights, left, right and centre, certainly any rights to run their own affairs in their own countries. Oppression was the order of the day. And the antisemitism that provoked the flight of Jews and the Balfour Declaration (after they had been largely blocked from Britain by Balfour) was in a Christian European empire.

I am a realist. For decades America turned a blind eye to the employment of undocumented workers and many of the biggest employers were Republicans who faced no legal consequences for breaking the law. Even Trump did it for crying out loud. Before you kick them all out you’re going to have to figure out a) who is going to do all that work and b) how much extra it’s going to cost. The situation with milk has a Canadian dimension. America has the gall to complain about our supply management system while employing huge numbers of illegal workers to produce its milk as well as subsidizing it. They’re breaking their own laws to compete with us.

No problem. Here is one for you from the US government on another group of farm workers that makes that distinction more explicitly because obviously individual farmers are reluctant to admit they are breaking the law. Foreign-born unauthorized is the green bit. There is a lot of green. So do you want to see ALL those undocumented workers stop picking your fruit and self-deport immediately? Deep down Americans are aware of the number of illegals already which is why so many, even MAGA voters, don’t really want to see the plug abruptly pulled on the farms, hotels, building sites and slaughterhouses of the country. An unspoken bargain was struck years ago and there is no easy way out of it.

These Russian long-range bombers won’t be causing mayhem any time soon: https://www.nbcnews.com/world/ukraine/ukraine-drone-strike-on-russian-airfield-rcna210210 Apparently, the WH wasn’t informed ahead of time. Probably for the best. https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cgrg7kelk45t This may be the biggest such attack by Ukraine in the war. So far.

No, they are ‘not entirely’ comprised of illegal immigrants but a large number are and if you sent all those undocumented workers home at once as Trump seems to want you would see massive disruption to those industries. Of course, the irony here is that Trump wants us Canadians to accept more of such illegally produced milk: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/15/magazine/milk-industry-undocumented-immigrants.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Not really. There was order without freedom. The rights of small nations were trampled on for another century, for many nations until 1989. Russia hasn’t got the message yet and China may never get it which means the world may be heading in a very dark direction, back to the ‘good old days’ when a handful of men made all the decisions.

Look for recent European comparisons, preferably in this century. Putin constantly harps way back to justify his invasion. The Poles, Czechs, Irish and other small nations have no need to fear the German and British empires any more but they certainly do need to fear the Russian empire which is still very much alive and living by 19’th century rules.

China is a totalitarian tyranny. I don’t envy its inmates.

Read about the West Bank.

Minding their own business? Why am I even responding to mindless trolling on that level? I blame myself. To state what is obvious to most people in the world: criticizing the IDF is not the necessarily the same as supporting Hamas. We are going to see many more countries condemning Israel’s conduct.

The statements of Israel’s current government do not support your claims. They have no intention, none, of ever allowing a Palestinian state. Read those statements. In the West Bank, farmers are bring driven from their land as we debate and this has been going on for decades. You need to read a little more about the West Bank and what has been going on there since 1967.

China. End of story. Toss out all the illegal aliens, amigo, and watch the slaughterhouses, hotels, farm and hospitals grind to a halt and GDP per capita fall through the floor. Who do you actually think does all that work?

Mate, they are actively killing people and stealing their land, openly and shamelessly backed up by the IDF to which America says nothing. If they had to fire rockets to do that they would but they don’t.

What you’re trying to say is that because Israel isn’t quite as vicious and nihilistic as Hamas it’s the good guy. Let me tell you something about tribal wars - there are no good guys. Israel isn’t as vicious because it doesn’t have to be right now. From the river to the sea was Likud’s policy from the start and Zionist policy before that. Look up their original platform. Now it is a reality. And make no mistake. Israel will not hesitate to use its fifty five year old nuclear stockpile (which America tries to ignore at every opportunity because it broke its own laws in ignoring Israel’s theft of US nuclear technology) should the need arise.

Separate people should serve as heads of state and government. That’s the best arrangement and it’s the one followed in most European democracies. It forms yet another bulwark against authoritarianism. Unfortunately, we have made it virtually impossible to change our current arrangement short of war but I think there is one thing we might be able to do without a protracted legal crisis - allow parliament to take a series of votes, preferable secret, on candidates for the GG and take the result as non-binding advice to the PM. This would strengthen the independence of the office and in time make them a de facto head of state. The PM should not be directly involved in choosing the GG. This isn’t in our top twenty problems as a state but I suspect it’s going to become a bigger issue. Trump has set out to cause crises abroad and is succeeding. We never want to see some unfortunate monarch having to say one thing in Canada and quite another in Britain.

Why it’s awkward has just been illustrated in the tariffs saga. We all hope the current hullabaloo will die down but the direction of travel of the West is not encouraging at the moment. It’s no longer difficult to see a day when the PMs of Canada and the UK will have diametrically opposed policy positions on a vital matter. If that ever happens I hope everybody here understands whom Charles and his heirs will follow. Their full time job is in Britain.

Are these chants so different? https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-jerusalem-nationalist-march-ben-gvir-0c6471592182aac205115150d1b3a552

The awkward truth remains; our monarch is a foreigner, an Englishman. We may pretend that’s not the case but there it sits.