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SpankyMcFarland

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Everything posted by SpankyMcFarland

  1. SpankyMcFarland
    The Americans say they want a new deal but sanctioning the Iranian Foreign Minister doesn’t sound like a step in that direction: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/07/imposes-sanctions-iranian-foreign-minister-zarif-190731203547531.html
  2. SpankyMcFarland
    No, not at all. I want the US to START the heavy lifting. You live on this planet too, I presume? Europe and North America were the first to cause this problem so it is fitting that they should be the first in to tackle it.
  3. SpankyMcFarland
    I imagine most of us agree that what really matters is global GHG production. Unfortunately, countries are the units we have to sort this problem out.
  4. SpankyMcFarland
    Obviously, this is not an exact science, and I’m not sure how the whole issue of changing national borders etc. was managed here, but, by one estimate, the US has been responsible for something like 26% of cumulative global CO2 emissions since 1750, China 12% and India 3%. https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions Many factors will have to be considered for the future including dramatic increases in population in the developing world. However, by region, Europe and North America have contributed far more of the existing excess burden of GHG than India or China however you slice it so it’s hardly unreasonable for us to be asked to take the lead, particularly as we have more resources to address the problem.
  5. SpankyMcFarland
    Because you have people in many smaller countries like Canada claiming that their greenhouse gas output does not matter because their particular country is too small to affect the overall figure. If the US took the lead it could at least force North America to follow. Then we could see a coalition build to put pressure on the developing world to follow suit. Otherwise we are all headed for climate catastrophe.
  6. SpankyMcFarland
    To answer the question, the evidence seems to point that way ever more conclusively: It is now a matter of urgency that the US provides leadership in a program of global action against anthropogenic climate change.
  7. SpankyMcFarland
    Johnson is a man who is unwilling to answer a simple question regarding how many children he has. He’s an entertainer and should never have been given the job of PM.
  8. SpankyMcFarland
    More ridiculous actually.
  9. SpankyMcFarland
    I doubt that. Nationalist leaders rarely work well together for obvious reasons and any deal would have to be approved by Congress. There are already rumblings there: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/brexit-pelosi-warns-uk-not-to-jeopardise-belfast-agreement-1.3967768 I will leave it to conservatives to decide whether Trump is really one of their own.
  10. SpankyMcFarland
    If you really want to get into the weeds on international health care comparisons, here's another good place to look: https://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/health-data.htm Needless to say, health care stats by country are devilishly difficult to interpret. For example, outcomes in hospital may reflect more on the general health of the population or home care rather than what goes on in hospitals. Definitions differ as well and deciding what somebody died of is still a diverse and arbitrary business.
  11. SpankyMcFarland
    It's a joke, guys, just going through the motions. What it does signal is that even the Conservatives have to feign seriousness on this issue now.
  12. SpankyMcFarland
    Trade will go on but there will be more barriers to trade in addition to tariffs i.e. the thousands of regulations that govern EU products will be a significant obstacle. Being for English, as opposed to British, nationalism is inherently destabilizing to the UK. It's like being in favour of Albertan nationalism rather than Canadian. And the Brits are going to find out what we know already - that the Americans are extremely difficult to do deals with. Every trade deal and international agreement surrenders some sovereignty. You've gotta serve somebody...which Farage and his ilk are about to find out.
  13. SpankyMcFarland
    Brexit simply wasn’t worth the trouble. British sovereignty will be curtailed in myriad trade deals anyway and the stability of the UK itself has been seriously undermined by this outburst of English nationalism.
  14. SpankyMcFarland
    Here, I think, is the CIHI report referenced above. Let’s just say there are many excellent opportunities for improvement: https://www.cihi.ca/sites/default/files/document/text-alternative-version-2016-cmwf-en-web.pdf CIHI is a great site for objective data. It deserves more attention that it gets: https://www.cihi.ca/en/international-comparisons
  15. SpankyMcFarland
    Some good ideas there. Patient exchange would be complex because each province effectively has a separately funded system with its own de facto rules and standards. One minor thing I’d like to see is a national standard on how long one should expect to wait to see one’s FP after the scheduled appointment time. My own doc is virtually never late but I hear things about friends and relatives fuming in the waiting room for up to two hours after they should have been seen. Barring emergencies, which we all understand, doctors should realize that our time is valuable to us. One partial solution lies in apps that call you just before the doctor is ready to see you. However, the best solution would be for physicians to properly plan their work day.
  16. SpankyMcFarland
    And this case is still dragging on...
  17. SpankyMcFarland
    Over 42C in Paris today, the hottest temperature ever recorded in that city.
  18. SpankyMcFarland
    One of the lessons of Brexit is how painful bilateral trade negotiations are these days for the weaker party. Britain has the second largest economy in the EU but it will have to struggle with the US after this current ordeal is over. For smaller European countries the EU offers strength in numbers.
  19. SpankyMcFarland
    Corbyn is a Brexiter who is mainly interested in becoming PM. His support for Remain is a political move designed to placate his party.
  20. SpankyMcFarland
    In most countries there is some dissatisfaction with the health service. We are by no means alone in that regard.
  21. SpankyMcFarland
    The country that really saved Assad’s hide was Russia, not Iran. Putin enabled him to terrorize his own country from the air. The Russians have yet to pay a serious price for that. Trump’s hesitation in bombing Iranian targets reflects the ambivalence of many of his supporters concerning yet another ME war. Beyond the loonie evangelical fringe, that prospect is none too inviting for America Firsters.
  22. SpankyMcFarland
    No mention of Yemen there which is progress. Most ME countries, including Israel of course, have set bombs off in other ME countries. That’s the nature of the region. Regarding incidents outside the region, Hezbollah’s bombing in Argentina occurred 25 years ago and it says a lot you have to back that far to find something like that in the Americas. The fact that the Iranians have not supported a similar effort in the last two decades in that continent suggests they may have learned something. Pressure on them now for it is kind of pointless. Remind me when the last Shia terrorist attack was on Canadian soil. The Sunnis are far more dangerous to civilians in Europe and North America than the Shia have been but the Saudis have never been held responsible for funding extremist mosques across the West. It’s reasonable to pressure Iran to change its policies on Syria and Lebanon, campaigns that are also harmful to Iran’s own ultimate interests and have cost way too much for that cash-strapped country. I would suggest that abruptly backing out of JCPOA (which addressed a different problem) and cutting off Iran’s main source of foreign income was not the way to go to achieve this goal.
  23. SpankyMcFarland
    Apparently, astronauts have walked on the moon for a total of only eighty hours. We’ve a long way to go to make this routine. If the Eagle had failed to take off from the moon, a speech had been written ‘for the widows’. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2019/07/17/if-apollo-11-failed-heres-the-speech-nixon-would-have-read/#.XTh4WcrRef0
  24. SpankyMcFarland
    Yes, the problem being that if multi-party deals are rescinded like this then it becomes a waste of time to work with the Americans on such agreements in the future.
  25. SpankyMcFarland
    By any sensible standard, they are less to blame for the crisis in Yemen than KSA/USA and their support of co-religionists across the region mirrors that of the Saudis. Let KSA and the US look to their own delinquent behaviour there first. Getting involved propping up Assad was a mistake on multiple levels but he is the incumbent tyrant in that country, just like MBS or El Sisi who are supported by the Americans. Unlike the Saudis, they have not financed terrorists across the world - Iran actually assisted the fight against ISIS. The US also has some cheek demanding that other countries cease trading with Iran, the sort of hubris we saw with Cuba. While the Iranians are governed by a despotic theocracy, American behaviour has been alarmingly erratic here. Unilaterally dumping a deal signed by multiple nations which had nothing to do with Iran's policy in Iraq, Syria etc. devalues any subsequent undertaking by a US president and destabilizes the region.
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