SpankyMcFarland

The USSR did have success against the Wehrmacht but it was aided by the USA and those days are long gone. Russia is close to a failed state at this stage, a model nobody wishes to copy. China does a lot more than make plastic tat for Walmart. From a standing start a few decades ago, it now challenges the West, not just America, in many leading technologies including semiconductors, quantum computing, bioengineering and satellites to name but a few. As I noted above, take a look at the original articles in scientific and medical journals these days and count the authors from China. Examine the trajectory of Chinese progress and you will see no peer in human history. Even at the height of the space race, Russia was way behind the US in most other areas and never offered a a serious economic challenge to the West.

Russia, a ramshackle former empire in precipitous decline, poses one sort of military threat at the moment that would destroy them as well. China, on the other hand, poses multiple and growing threats to the West for the foreseeable future: military, scientific, technological, economic, even social. The sheer size of the Chinese population and its extraordinary ability in the service of a totalitarian system make this the greatest threat liberal democracy has faced.

So many obvious differences between Russia and China on the threat they pose. Go to a Walmart and try to find stuff not made in China. Open any scientific or medical journal and observe the Chinese names therein and how many of those authors now hail from the mainland. Think of the Chinese people you know and what they’ve achieved and scale that up to 1.4 billion. This is something new for the West. A great Eastern civilization is reasserting itself. Unfortunately, it’s taking a deeply authoritarian and xenophobic path to do this at the moment.

Common sense isn’t science. The PRC is secretive about everything so that proves nothing. Give me the peer-reviewed articles that change the debate. The lab leak theory is fine but it needs stronger recent evidence than what has been shown so far.

If Putin keeps this up, Russia could become a Chinese colony.

There are clearly security issues here that would make a public inquiry problematic. I would like to see a confidential internal inquiry administered by parliament. Unfortunately, JT can’t be trusted to run this himself.

American influence on our elections won’t end those elections any time soon. Their effect is essentially benign. By contrast, the CCP will not be happy until the world is as miserable as China. It’s the only way Xi and the gang can guarantee their rule at home indefinitely.

You’re unlikely to get peer-worthy answers here. It is probable that as habitats are disrupted and destroyed, animal viruses, including coronaviruses, are crossing species barriers much more frequently than we realize and just fail, fortunately, to start a plague. Thus it’s very hard to say how these viruses behave because so many are not detected at all. For example, AIDS probably infected humans many decades before the Eighties. There could have been numerous outbreaks of Covid before. Who would notice some old people dying of pneumonia in China?

We may never know. Either way human activity caused it and we are woefully vulnerable to the next viral pandemic.

I am as keen as anyone to criticize the PRC but that proves nothing with regard to the origin of this virus. It’s a secretive totalitarian regime after all. The question remains an open one and the tone taken by Wray is surprising. He should back up his opinion with evidence. If he has something new to add he should share it.

Leader fatigue has indeed set in as it always does, but if the Conservatives want to win more than one election they’re going to have to pay attention to what Canadians want and it’s still not far from the dish Chrétien served up. Radical right-wing menus just won’t do well here.

Is there new evidence supporting the lab leak hypothesis? I am as keen to criticize the PRC as the next man but facts are needed. Two recent scientific papers I came across suggested the wet market theory was more plausible.

People of Chinese ethnicity need to be prominent among the spokespeople on this scandal. It is in no way an anti-Chinese effort by the deep state. The PRC probably hates nobody more than Michael Chong in Canada and he is widely respected across parties as a distinguished parliamentarian. I’d like to see him addressing this matter more often. He’s not the sort of guy anybody can easily dismiss, even the PM.

The PRC is looking for vulnerabilities in every country in the world and their search won’t be confined to ethnic Chinese either. Obviously, the Liberals have serious issues already but no party should consider itself immune. Any politician with a financial or personal problem is a potential target.

This is serious and it isn’t going away. Concern about it is not confined to Conservatives.

I’d be more worried about a friendly China than a hostile Ukraine if I were Russian. Putin may end up losing a big chunk of Siberia to his new friends and masters.

Third most corrupt country? That doesn’t sound right. Ukraine is corrupt but not that corrupt. Here’s one assessment that puts it considerably lower (or higher depending how one looks at it) than that: https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2021/index/ukr

Zelensky is no longer vital to Ukraine’s resistance. In death he would become a secular saint inspiring the country. Putin’s demise, however, might stop the war. There would be no rational reason to pursue it after him because Russia can’t win. At some point it will have to go home. For ordinary Russians, a temporary victory of their side that toppled the government in Kiev could be even worse for them, starting a guerilla war across their country with bombings etc. in major cities.

Wait a second, are people on the right who decry woke politics, cancel culture, snowflakeism etc. etc. claiming that those who disagree with them are racist and bigoted? Isn’t that the, ahem, culturally Marxist way of debating things?

In my neck of the woods, the Pentecostals are the only Christian denomination with a future. I’d say their Sunday attendance numbers exceed the total of all the others combined, with a much better (younger) age profile as well. Lots of singing backed up by an excellent sound system, and great support for their congregation on the other six days of the week are two factors in their continuing success.

It’s hard to believe this Riccardo Bosi character is real and was once a senior officer in the Australian Army. So many grotesque creatures are crawling out of the woodwork to support Putin.

I wouldn’t be too hard on the policies of Britain and France before WWII. Neither had recovered from the uniquely horrendous shock of WWI at that stage, especially France, and all senior politicians had been personally affected by the war. Even the Russians were anxious not to face the Wehrmacht again. Indeed, once the war started, both America and Britain were by no means eager for a rematch in France. Churchill remained obsessed by the soft underbelly strategy which led to a two year campaign in Italy, while the invasion of Western Europe was postponed until Russia was clearly winning in the East. Naturally, it was difficult for diplomats in London and Paris to believe that the other party in negotiations was willing to repeat such a disaster on European soil and might even welcome that outcome.

It’s a claim made by that book. Another dodgy claim. Look around, there are thousands of gods. I wish I knew less about it. None of us have a good end. That’s in the region of correct.

Well now, the land was chosen by a god, their god as it happens, one of countless thousands of similar idols. What was that, Jehovah? This is all ours in perpetuity? Good man, yourself! Throughout history, the gods have conveniently said whatever is required to those who worship them. That’s straight out of Monty Python. Many nations are surrounded by enemies and false friends. In Israel’s own neighbourhood, I would immediately pick out Armenia and the Kurds as examples of that. It’s very fortunate indeed for us settlers that ‘No ethnic groups in North America has exclusive rights to the continent’. I wonder who determined that? Might it have been us?

Does accepting this argument affect the legitimacy of Canada and similar countries? Most of us are recent arrivals on this continent. The indigenous tribes were here thousands of years before us and there’s no question they have a cultural and religious connection with the land that pre-exists ours.