SpankyMcFarland
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Posts posted by SpankyMcFarland
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There could be negative consequences for both parties. As to how they can hurt us, do we want a trade war? Are we ready for such unpleasantness? Ask the govts and realtors of BC and Ontario. How keen would we be to burst the property bubble now? It might be good in the long-term but there would be pain. They are a major economy and we are a minor one. Whatever happens with us is peripheral to their concerns. Any inconvenience we could cause them would be temporary while all the stuff we buy in Walmart could take a sudden hike in price. We have had a Faustian bargain going with the Chinese for decades - they've kept inflation low and we've sent them our jobs.It would? How? We have a $45 billion trade deficit with China. They buy a few billion in canola oil, agricultural and mining materials, and sell us manufactured goods which are responsible for tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of jobs in China. How exactly can they hurt us compared what we can do to them?
This being Canada, I suspect we also have a fairly sketchy idea of how deeply they have compromised our govt computer systems and who works for them. A lot of mistakes have already been made.
We can get tougher with China - but quietly. The success of Trump suggests that we'll be fighting more of our own battles from now on with less backing from Uncle Sam.
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We are in a tough spot with the Chinese government. Any sudden deterioration of relations would hurt us a lot more than them. I would advise passive aggression - friendly public statements from the PM, steering clear of human rights as much as possible, but a cautious approach to any changes that would further increase their influence in our country. How many operatives do they already have here?
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I wish the TV channels would keep one just for Olympic track and field. I missed both 10k finals which would never have happened on Brit TV. By mistake, I ended up recording hours of Olympic golf, the penultimate abomination, despite Bell promising lots of other sports (although I would not count anything even I can do well, like golf, as a sport). The ultimate horror figured later - baseball (ugh) which figured in one TSN 'Olympic' spot I recorded. I hope I never have to see A-Rod crying again in the years left to me.
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I think the title should be 'In Memoriam'. Can it be corrected?
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Raitt and O'Toole are calming figures. Rempel is more strident. On her 'Power and Politics' appearances she was overly fond of starting sentences with 'I find it curious' accompanied by a sarcastic smirk. She may be the sort of woman who might rile some female voters. On the plus side, she's a good debater.
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India did until 2010. Apparently they both decided it wasn't such a good idea.
This was one of the cases that encouraged the change in Ireland:
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Aside from us and the Americans, who else grants citizenship to anyone born in the country, even to foreigners?
Ireland did until 2004:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Amendment_of_the_Constitution_of_Ireland
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Any bilingual country that has English as one of its languages will struggle to keep the other alive these days.
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My best friend immigrated to Canada from Ireland and sent his four kids through the French system (not immersion) in Burlington, Ontario. Three are completely bilingual adults now and two speak French at work. It can be done.
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I can't speak to Europe, although clearly when you have millions or tens of millions of people living a few hours away from your home it provides more of an inclination to learn their language. But the reason why so many people know English reasonably well, including the French, is because of the overwhelming nature of the English culture, primarily from the United States. Everyone wants to learn English because the world's big movie stars are English, and all the big movies are English, and the most popular TV shows and magazines and books and everything else is English, not to mention all those manuals from so many trade publications. The internet was and still is mainly English. There is a tidal wave of stuff out there in English, which is why so many people learn it enthusiastically while young and make constant use of it.
French, not so much.
There is a downside to that for other Anglophone countries. Their own cultural products struggle to be seen even at home as their markets are flooded with US material. On Bell TV, we don't even get the world edition of CNN news but are given the US version. For the 'younger people' there is a means of escape from this on the Net if they would only choose to use it.
Monolingualism isn't as limiting as it used to be but people like myself stuck with one language do tend to see the world from one angle. It was one of Christopher Hitchens' regrets and David Cameron's too. Even the news in French looks like it is covering a different planet sometimes.
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The pol who most impressed me with his bilingualism was Jean Charest - I didn't realize he wasn't a native English speaker at first - but apparently his mother was an Anglophone.
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Just about the only people who are really fluently bilingual in Canada are Francophones who grow up outside Quebec and Anglophones who grow up within it. Or those who have both a French and English parent.
Anglophones have a general problem with learning other languages because they can get by without another language. It's basically laziness. Many Northern Europeans are tri-lingual and their English is prefect. Even I can tell that the French of most Anglophone politicians in Canada is awful, far worse than the English of Francophone pols. What were they doing in school?
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The British are probably the best in the world when it comes to intelligence services such as detecting terrorism and foiling terrorist-plots. They received a lot of experience from the IRA in the 80's.
The French are not nearly as good and that's probably why terrorists keep on targetting France. For the French authorities Paris-attacks was bad but especially bad was that a similar attack happened again so short time after. It was a humiliation for the French authorities.
That is difficult to assess. British intelligence was utterly humiliated after the war by communist spies who kept on popping up - I suspect we don't know all their names yet - whereas the French were more effective in that particular area. The IRA was always a small group, centred in a small region and with limited aims. The French are facing something much larger.
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I think that was clarified by his buddies on the CNN panel. I believe it had something to do with this speech intending to lay out the "what", and the "how" comes later. When asked that same question, they made the point that yes, Mexico will pay for it.
Wolf Blitzer asked the question and either Manafort or Miller (the speechwriter who looks like he popped off a Mad Man episode) answered it. These days when your surrogates repeat something it's not as truthy as you doing it, apparently.
Amazing to see Trump feuding with Cruz again today, completely off message as Pence looked on, well, pensively. You could imagine him seeking to settle a lot of scores as President.
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Are we listening to the same speech?
The "wild rhetoric" wasn't so much "trimmed off", as it was hidden between the lines.
"This use of fear to destroy democracy is so old that it’s described exactly in Plato’s Republic, written in Ancient Greece around 380 B.C.
Tyranny, says Socrates in The Republic, is actually “an outgrowth of democracy.” And would-be tyrants always in every instance claim to be shielding regular people from terrible danger: “This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears above ground he is a protector.”
Trump said that he is going to “protect” Americans or some aspect of American life 13 times tonight."
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Yes it's still there e.g. he's still going to build a wall but no mention of Mexico paying for it.
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Fluent speech by Trump with some of the wilder rhetoric trimmed off. Now for him the tough part begins of staying on message.
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Demanding the extradition of Gulen is good for Erdogan either way and may be even better if the US keeps him. A show trial could be divisive at home but railing against foreigners who refuse to hand over evil-doers will play very well with the base.
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The time to get tough was during the campaign. Instead, Cruz initially let others do the hard lifting against Trump while he drafted along in his slipstream.
He was the most talented candidate in the field but I think there will be even less of a market next time round for what he is selling.
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It will be interesting to see what direction Turkey takes. The army is no longer in control. It is still in a war against the Kurds and fighting in alliance with the Kurds against ISIS. Will Turkey now embrace Russia and look favorably at Assad? With a new death penalty will Turkey thumb its nose at the EU and NATO and ally with Putin?
The initial common theme by the media was that Turkey was now going to turn away from radical Islam but Erdogan is moving towards an Islamist state.
Some media are treating this coup of a coup a good thing while others report that this is bad news for the Turkish people and the West. Not sure yet what direction Erdogan is taking his nation.
I'd say he's moving towards an Erdoganist state.
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“Everything is being Arabized,” said Karaca Borar, who owns an antiques shop on one of the crooked, cobbled streets in European Istanbul, and supplied many of the items that fill a nearby museum owned by Mr. Pamuk that is based on his novel “Museum of Innocence.”
He said he was tired of hearing the Arabic greeting of “salaam aleikum” on the streets, and tired of so many Syrians in general. (It is a widely shared sentiment: When Mr. Erdogan recently said Turkey should offer citizenship to Syrians, a right-wing secular newspaper called Syrians “vermin” in a front-page headline.)
Asked about the mood of the city, which before the coup attempt had faced several devastating terrorist attacks for which the Islamic State was blamed, Mr. Borar said, “Terrible, terrible, terrible.”
“We’re not happy,” he said. “I’m not at ease.”
He continued: “We were the only secular, decent country in a bad region. Now, we are like one of those Arab states.”
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Giuliani is still an excellent speaker:
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A few needless own goals at the RNC. Melania's speech should have been checked more carefully for copied and pasted bits.
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Are you suggesting other non-Western cultures don't or did not engage in pitched battle? I hope not...lol.
I'm a fan of Keegan, as well.
I'm suggesting that the Romans and Greeks increased the mortality rate of battles. Discrete pitched battles surrounded by long peaceful interludes are not so much a Western construct as one of advanced civilizations.
Going back to the basic human group, you might have only 30 or 40 men who could fight. Skirmishing has been the standard interaction for millennia.
Canada - a wholly owned province of China
in Federal Politics in Canada
Posted · Edited by SpankyMcFarland
I don't want to sound like a booster for China here. It IS a bit mystifying that we can't be tougher.
China's record on human rights is terrible but it won't listen to us, and no two countries have the same approach to human rights.
The consumer goods from China are not 'crappy' - they are amazingly inexpensive and of impressive quality for the price. No other country can compete with them. If we cut them out, we would see a significant increase in prices for consumer goods and serious disruption of our retail sector.
A full-on trade war, with generalised Chinese divestment from Canada, would have serious implications across our economy and potentially public order issues in BC. I don't see the BC govt or the oil sector welcoming that.