SpankyMcFarland

Steal till you draw your last breath.

Russia? Russia is unable to win a war against a country that barely had an army a few years ago. If Trump gave a damn about the Russian military threat to the world the US would still be fully supporting Ukraine. Did America need to own Britain to fight alongside it in both world wars? Trump’s premise is ridiculous. He wants to own Greenland because it makes him feel better.

In an imperfect world it is inexcusable to make matters far worse as Trump wants to do.

How often does this happen? The Leader of the Opposition loses his seat, gets elected in another one and then announces he’s going to run in yet another one? https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/pierre-poilievre-conservative-party-riding-9.7053418 Any idea where PP is going to run?

I don’t think you fully understand the crisis your hero Trump has plunged the world into.

The UK has one physician licensing body, the GMC, for 65 million people and four ‘provinces’ (three of whom call themselves countries) while providing at least as good a service as our system of 13 such bodies. One fear in going to one college would be a big rush by doctors to Ontario and BC. I hope reform along Poilievre’s proposed lines isn’t forgotten in the current megacrisis. He made some good points.

You really think Trump is going to help you?

2. All the more reason to sort it out. We’ve got to get over ourselves and the way we assess foreign training. Assess doctors on their individual skills, not on their country of origin, 3. Harvesting organs without consent would cause that.

The thing is that Trump’s generous friends on the other side of the Gulf get nervous whenever the violent overthrow of unelected despots is discussed. Are you worried that a violent transition could lead to anarchy along Libyan lines?

I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we need an expanded private care system in Canada. Our ERs are being choked by people who should be seen by GPs. Only the acutely ill should have to show up there for care. While on holiday in Europe last year, I walked into a private clinic and got a full allergy screen which diagnosed a dust mite problem I’d had for decades. Lord knows how long it would have taken to arrange an appointment here. In my province all our dermatologists are in the capital, necessitating what is in winter a dangerous drive of many hours for fifteen minutes with a doctor about a rash. In the UK GPs take a one year diploma in dermatology to do much of this work. On IMG (foreign grad) licensure, we need to fast-track this. I’ve seen utterly ridiculous decisions made about how much training foreign grads require, eg, a cardiologist lecturing in the UK was told he needed 3 1/2 years more training to become a basic internist. UK trained surgeons and anesthesiologists will often have 10-15 years of training already when they come to Canada compared to the 4-5 required here and yet they struggle to become eligible to sit the exams. The assessment system simply isn’t fit for purpose. Poilievre had some proposals to improve this. It’s at least one area I largely agree with him on. On this matter, there’s a massive unexplained surplus of organs for transplant in China. We don’t have to rely on what Falun Gong say.

Although China is making dramatic strides in medical technology, I would require independent corroboration of any claim made by that country about its health care system. There have been ‘issues’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Gong_practitioners_in_China

1867 was just after the end of slavery in the US. Standards have changed in the world since then. Trump refuses to rule out military action against a NATO member that has been nothing but cooperative on this issue. That should be unacceptable to everybody.

On Iran, the US should be under-promising and over-delivering rather than the opposite. Here’s a concrete example of what could be done from the WSJ: https://apple.news/AWz6c0vw9Qd2iwMlryJd0lQ

The failure of the hijab ban means that Iran is secularizing anyway. The real question is where the destination is - authoritarian or democratic? One could imagine a senior army officer seizing power but leaving the existing structures in place with a friendly cleric in the role currently occupied by Khamanei.

I’d like to see a gradual retreat of religious leaders from the political sphere. Ayatollah Sistani next door in Iraq, although born in Iran, tends to leave politics to the politicians in the absence of a national crisis like the attack by Islamic State. He has generally been a force for positive change. If the Iranian mullahs could see the light and surrender power they could avert a civil war and perhaps the break-up of the country.

No heir apparent but two of those three are closely related to previous leaders. The least worst might be Hassan Khomeini of all people. Of course, the regime likes to see internal opposition as organized by the US but they must know that’s not the case. They’re doing a fantastically awful job all on their own. I tend to think that a more secular dictatorship with input from the military would be more acceptable to Iranians and other countries too, especially Sunni neighbours, and would thus have a better chance of survival. However there’s always the danger in reform of doing a Gorbachev and bringing the whole edifice down.

It is guesswork even for those who know something about Iran which certainly does not include me. If the great man does go off to meet his maker, I suspect the regime will want to manage the crisis by letting the IRGC take a stronger role and cutting back on the morality side of things that just provoke people needlessly. That would require a more conciliatory chief bottlewasher willing to chart a slightly more secular course. OTOH they could choose a more energetic version of the incumbent.

Thirty years ago, in my previous area of interest, one would see the occasional Chinese name, usually outside China. Now the research journals are filled with Mainland Chinese authors. There is a profound change afoot. Anybody can see that. One can recognize reality and try to deal with it or be washed away.

Some good news on the info war front: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/hackers-target-iran-state-tvs-satellite-transmission-broadcast-129340123 They need a lot more of that.

Are we Canadians in any position to cast stones on such a matter? Very bad things happened in the past in Greenland. That’s no excuse for colonialism now. That’s a little off-topic.

Russia is not able to beat a country that barely had an army a few years ago. As European manufacturing of military equipment ramps up, Putin is going to see his war machine progressively degraded. America will need every single friend it can find on this planet to contain China.

Essentially, Iran has one buyer of its oil - China. If Trump wanted to strangle the mullah’s foreign money supply he could go after that but I don’t see him talking so tough to Xi these days. Like Putin’s buddies, the Iranian elite has money all over the place, especially in Europe. That should be pursued much more aggressively. China also assists in controlling the Internet; Western tech companies could do a better job resisting that. I’d like to see a bigger budget for BBC Persian. In addition, a campaign of satire is absolutely intolerable to theocracies. Once the laughter becomes general they begin to lose their power.

Think of all those victims of Scotch whisky. Time to swoop on this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Swinney#:~:text=John Ramsay Swinney (born 13,and between 2000 and 2004.

The Iranian government has had literally thousands of years of experience in autocracy. Zombie regimes like this can persist with modest popular support eg North Korea, Belarus. Look at Syria which was run by a corrupt family from a tiny religious minority and ended up as a narco-state. By contrast the mullahs have millions of Farsi-speaking Shia at the undereducated end of the spectrum who still stay loyal. Khomeini studied the Shah for decades and learned the lessons there, both how to topple a king and how to stay in power. Unless Iran breaks up, I fear change will have to come from within as it did in the Soviet Union.

The word ‘game’ is ambiguous. Obviously, it occurs in game theory but it can also trivialize the issue.