SpankyMcFarland

I liked Duceppe. Lots of fun. Too nice to be separatist. I don’t know what evil chance brought him down that road.

America’s proudest boast these days: we’re not as bad as China. Sad. Very sad.

For a start, they’re not threatening to invade us.

What global population number would you like to see?

Iran’s government will be difficult to decapitate. Like Hamas, they have long prepared for such an eventuality. Unless the IRGC is profoundly degraded, I don’t see the regime falling from external pressure. There is also another potential problem here when you get involved in a family row. Any foreigner attacking a country naturally elicits a hostile response even in many of those who hate the regime.

Just clarified - he is South African.

I would place Berton in a higher category.

So where is Trump’s America on this spectrum?

I’d like you to expand on that thesis, for my benefit at least. I’m not a great book reader myself these days but I do recall that when and why empires fall is frequently a matter of great debate among historians.

If the mullahs were pro-American we’d hear an awful lot less about their human rights abuses, like the lads next door who buy lovely houses in London and race their horses in Ireland.

You are a tough marker! Do you not think much of Tolstoy? War and Peace was good I thought. What am I saying? I really wouldn’t consider myself worthy of rating anything by Tolstoy or the other great Russians. Nearly all of it flies over my head. I’ve read Oliver Twist and A Tale of Two Cities. Great Expectations is one of my favourite books - I strongly identify with Magwitch, a self-described ‘varmint’ in the colonies sending money home. I’ve only read Maupassant in French because I had to at school! Atwood I find rather 20th century English in her style. The prose is fairly spare. I prefer something more ornate.

Has anybody used FireSmart guidelines to retrofit their home? This guy points to some things in there that he’s not going to do. I had to laugh - he sounds as South African at the end as his name suggests! Don’t know if he is. https://thenarwhal.ca/firesmart-homes-canada-wildfires/ https://firesmartcanada.ca

What can one say to this? https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/uk-pm-outraged-trumps-comments-downplaying-nato-allies/story?id=129496969 Starmer could not let Trump’s slander go. We’re already hearing the response from soldiers who lost limbs and mothers without sons. I got goosebumps when one of those women spoke on the Beeb tonight. Her son was the youngest British fatality. How she was able to control herself is beyond me.

The Russian war machine must be a bugger to start. They really needed that contraption up and running four years ago.

Never heard of him. His degrees from mills may be genuine but are still useless.

How can you know what Trump’s intentions are if they keep changing? Couldn’t he be lying about his intentions?

This is the problem when you start making people who disagree with you into caricatures. I support the free market. Banks are a vital part of that, as is the ability of any central bank to set interest rates independently. Most politicians want lower interest rates because they give a boost to the economy but it may not be the right time in the economic cycle to do that, hence the need for an independent central bank.

Here’s another thing I don’t see a justification for: restrictive covenants in malls that stop competition. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/grocery-giants-control-9.7055067?cmp=rss

Can anyone describe a similar event to this in occurring in Britain or Canada? A notorious American traitor is flown to the country in a luxury jet and greeted like a hero by the Prime Minister at the airport? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-55484433

One narco is off the streets and another is back on them: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-honduras-hernandez-pardon-9.7000112 The fentanyl crisis seems to be turning a corner but not because of the war on drugs. Demand is the crucial factor, demand from people all around you. Stopping the importation of heroin has merely meant that more potent and deadly drugs like fentanyl have become popular because they are easier to smuggle in. We need to address why North Americans have such a huge desire for dreadful drugs like these compared even to British people, for example, but that would require rigorous honesty and self-criticism. Blaming criminals ‘out there’ feels a lot better.

He’s a disgusting criminal. There’s no way around his appalling behaviour through life. Republicans had many other options, perfectly normal people with very right-wing views, but they chose the coup guy again and voters went the same way after all the dreadful things they know he had done. Anybody who voted for him should take some personal responsibility and stop blaming other people for their reprehensible choice, freely made.

This is is how nations who respect each other deal with a dispute in Greenland, specifically Hans Island: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisky_War

This shows how unserious Wakeham is. With the possibility of an unhinged PQ government in Quebec being elected soon he still hasn’t got his review committee up and running here. People on the committee don’t know if they are still on it! https://vocm.com/2026/01/22/premier-mum-on-reports-suggesting-changes-made-to-mou-negotiating-team/ Make no mistake. The clock is ticking. If we have to wait until 2041 for a deal like Mad Danny Williams is prepared to do there’ll be no province left. https://vocm.com/2026/01/15/ball-is-in-nls-court-on-finalizing-hydro-mou-as-time-ticks-down-toward-quebec-election/

The six empires of Europe and Western Asia were stable for a century.

Russia isn’t in that league. If it manages to hang onto Siberia it will be a regional threat like Israel, Turkey or India. This spheres of influence idea is bad news for South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. They must rearm dramatically and consider nukes.