SpankyMcFarland

What happened first as farce this week may return as tragedy. American democracy will face far more competent domestic enemies than Trump.

Socialism with a capitalist twist as well. There lies a crucial difference between the two regimes. Hitler supported private ownership and the great companies of Germany as long as they served his purposes. One relevant lesson from Nazi Germany here, and something we should bear in mind when dealing with Xi and the gang, is that capitalism and totalitarianism are not incompatible.

There are athletes who can’t resist betting on games, taking steroids or bribing refs. That’s who they are. Trump is one of those guys in the sport of politics. He sees nothing wrong with cheating and seems to enjoy it. There is no hope of changing an old man who thinks that way, and there is no excuse for supporting him.

Like many other major global problems, dealing with the CCP will involve both mitigation and adaptation. We can do very little to change Xi and the gang on our own so our only hope is to work with our allies and trading partners to push back on aggressive Chinese government behaviour at home and abroad. If trade is going to be threatened every time some individual voices an opinion the boys in Beijing don’t like, then we are probably going to have to cut back on trade. I didn’t agree with arresting Meng and persisting with extradition, especially after Trump made clear she was just a bargaining chip. Her alleged offences involve business in a third country rather than the crimes of Huawei purely in the US, an undesirable extra-territorial habit the Yanks have gotten into, but we’re stuck now and should just get it done ASAP. In the current environment, any Canadian in China is a potential hostage and travel to that country should at least be discouraged. Modern China is like the early US; any nation near it is under threat. Hong Kong is doomed and I wouldn’t hold out much hope for Taiwan either, a precious prize in the race for semiconductor supremacy and a rebuke to the communist system. South Korea and Japan are uncomfortably close too and may be pulled into a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere under new management. Unlike the Soviets, the Chinese have vast amounts of money and technological expertise with which to lure countries, or often just greedy and gullible leaders, into their orbit through debt diplomacy. In every foreign relationship we have, the Chinese element must be considered from now on. This applies many times more with the Americans. Examples include Russia and Iran. Neither wants to become a Chinese satellite, as recent unease within the Iranian leadership itself on the proposed new China deal illustrates, so the US posture should always factor that in. If US sanctions push Iran too far, it will have to take even more Chinese money until it can’t pay it back and is in a Tony Soprano situation. Then only one more country, Turkey, would be needed to build roads and railways through client states from China all the way to Europe. Unless it collapses under the force of its own contradictions or there is a catastrophic war, China will probably dominate the world. We can only do our best to help change its political culture, and protect our own in the meantime, so that our way of life can continue.

No doubt there are Trumpsters out there who will defend even this behaviour: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/03/us/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-georgia.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Here’s a rare good news story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iran-women-refugees-rights-citizenship/2020/12/24/0b5f74b0-445d-11eb-ac2a-3ac0f2b8ceeb_story.html

The origin of the war was in the east - a rising power, Russia, threatened Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire simultaneously. Sooner or later, something was going to light that spark. The war resumed until Russia won in 1945.

The fate of the Uighurs and Tibetans should teach us what we need to know about China under the CCP. Years ago in Diyarbakir, Turkey, an elderly Armenian remarked to some Kurdish children who were teasing him, “We were the breakfast for them, you will be the lunch”. A Century of Silence After nearly a century, a town at the center of the Armenian genocide tries to make amends. Raffi Khatchadourian reports from his grandfather’s home town. www.newyorker.com As Chinese debt diplomacy spreads, more countries will find themselves in Imran Khan’s awkward position: Pakistani leader Imran Khan admitted he refuses to criticize China's treatment of its Uighur minority because they 'helped us when we were at rock bottom' Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan has been a vocal critic of the mistreatment of Muslims globally, but has been silent on the Chinese persecution of Uighurs. www.businessinsider.com More than 35 countries defend China over mass detention of Uighur Muslims in UN letter State ambassadors praise Beijing's 'remarkable achievements in the field of human rights' www.independent.co.uk ‘Remarkable achievements’ is right and we ain’t seen nothing yet.

Microplastics get everywhere:

If you were a betting man I'd be taking your money, b'y. I am a geezer myself and was in the same line of work as Hodkinson. The difference is I know I never had any serious expertise in this area. If the guff quoted above is what he really said, his arguments are dangerously wrong and decidedly inferior. Masks reduce the spread of this virus. Please wear them.

Hodkinson’s rather animated speech just sounds like a geezer having a rant which is what we tend to do.

I don’t know why Hodkinson thinks his qualifications should impress anybody. They’re not particularly relevant to the subject. Lord knows what he is up to with this investment in the US but it doesn’t imply expertise.

Our proximity to a much larger nation with the same language will always offer brain drain challenges. More broadly, our peer group should not be a superpower like the US but European countries with a similar population, e.g. a range between the Netherlands and Germany. We need to progress from being hewers of wood.

Presumably, a person saying “just another flu” really means a virus causing an average flu season and not 1918. That was quite the rant from Hodkinson there. A link would be great. His basic pathology qualification, 44 years ago mind you, was in general pathology where he would have been exposed to some basic virology. AFAIK he is not a virologist. The Royal College has issued a statement about his involvement with them: Which doesn’t explicitly clear up the claim he is said to have made about the examination committee. However, I presume the College would have admitted that if it were true?

When I think of Canada and medical advances, insulin is still the first thing that comes to mind. We don’t take ourselves seriously as a country. British and German scientists have been able to produce Covid vaccines already. Why not us?

A century later, the Anti-Mask League lives on:

Politics aside, there’s a deeper Canadian failure to be discussed here. Why can’t we hang on to talented guys like this? https://yalibnan.com/2020/11/18/immigrant-founded-moderna-leading-the-way-in-covid-19-vaccine/

How many Iranians are in Yemen right now? KSA’s spending in the war dwarfs Iran’s and if the Iranians pulled their support tomorrow the Houthis would still ‘gladly’ fight on in the mountains à la the Taliban, so I don’t think the Saudis would, or even could, leave. MBS should never have involved his country in this war. As KSA has been the source of so much radical Islamic terrorism across the world, e.g. 9/11, I should jolly well hope its leaders would want to sort out the misery their nation has caused. However, given that the de facto leader is an ignorant, psychopathic kleptomaniac, we shouldn’t get our hopes up too much. As for Yemen, it should be repartitioned. The current arrangement does not work.

What is it with you and Canada? The particulars don’t matter, e.g. who sought independence from whom. The global pattern is that smaller nations will always struggle to distinguish themselves from larger adjacent ones in this situation. That is how it is. Canada is not especially wicked in this regard. BTW French speakers north of the border could see all too well how much respect the US would have for them by the time 1812 came along.

This is not a uniquely Canadian problem. Across the world, smaller countries beside larger ones (by population) that share a language (or a very similar one) struggle to find their own identity as something beyond not being the other place. For a century after independence, Ireland identified itself as not British and has only recently looked to other small European countries for better models to follow. One sees the same dynamic in New Zealand, Belgium, Pakistan, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland (which had two countries not to follow) etc. In Uruguay, they seem to have gotten over their Argentinian obsession and now run a better country than their bigger neighbour in many ways.

I’m all ears/eyes. Please expand.

Why stop at masks? What about the oppression of having to use toilet paper or soap?

Fruit is very expensive in outback Canada and playing outside in freezing darkness isn’t for everybody.