SpankyMcFarland

Try to make your points more concisely. Nobody is going to read a tedious and tendentious screed

Me no read that much. Humans have been all over the place. My ancestors trekked across Africa, Asia and Europe. Can I claim anything along the way? The DNA record suggests many ancestors of modern Jews were German, French, Arab etc. British Palestine is an example of what happens when a tsunami of foreigners arrives in your land; as any First Nations person can tell you, they tend to take over. This Balfour Declaration was like Pope Adrian allegedly handing over Ireland to England; it wasn’t his to give. For internal British political reasons, the governing authority of Palestine betrayed its duty of care to the people already there.

If that suspension really is just about his views on a non-medical matter, then no doctor should post their views on social media again under their own name because somebody is always offended. In fairness, there may have been previous ‘issues’ not related to politics.

What are historic claims at this point? Do I have an historic claim to an acre of Ethiopia, given that all non-African humans hailed from that neck of the woods originally?

An early Pink Floyd album which is more melodic than I remembered.

The West, especially Britain, has been cosying up to Azerbaijani tyrant, Ilham Aliyev, for years: https://bylinetimes.com/2023/01/06/the-cynical-pact-between-russia-and-the-uk-over-azerbaijans-aggression-towards-armenia/ And the Turks under Erdogan remain keen to kill Armenians in 2023.

I think it does account for that. Poor men don’t earn significantly more than their partners. Therefore they are not bringing enough benefit to the household to be worth putting up with. Also you’re conflating fathering children and living together. Women tend to draw a clear distinction between those activities. Unless compelling reasons are offered, they’ve enough people to mind at home already.

You’d want to pick your spot in BC with care these days.

There are just more of those high earners in Alberta as a percentage of the total, so the effect is that taxpayers from the province contribute more to federal income tax.

So they go for a romantic holiday, Fidel steps in and Pierre is totally cool about it? I think everyone in Canada can agree that Trudeau père had a big ego.

Did Fidel Castro have any other blue-eyed children? I don’t know the answer to that.

From what I’ve read in the National Post, the dates don’t match up. Margaret Trudeau was the most scrutinized woman in Canada. Her every moment was monitored by a hungry press.

But do you think he looks like a typical 100% Irishman of his age?

Regarding the Castro business, impossible because they couldn’t have met at the time, look at photos of Castro and PT as young men. There’s definitely a resemblance. Maybe the father was a Castro? That would be harder to disprove.

It matters because all things matter in politics. For better or worse, style is content and people want to know these details. In no way would it be an opportunity to blame the guy. On the contrary, I think it would humanize him. Looking at Poilievre’s excellent black hair, dark eyes and skin that’s ageing well, I would be surprised if the father was of British or Irish origin. It could be a story that reflects modern Canada.

The EU can see these ‘platforms’ for what they are - the world’s biggest publishers who relentlessly spy on their readers, spread lies and destabilize democratic governments. Thank goodness somebody is demanding a smidgin of accountability from them

There’s lots of blame to go round. The drug and alcohol problems on some reserves are absolutely horrendous and local people have to take responsibility for that or it will never improve. We’ve also seen deficiencies in the investigations of missing women, no matter who killed them.

In Erdogan’s Turkey, the trend is broadly away from secularism and towards an Islamic state. Other aspects haven’t changed that much. Relations with the neighbours, many of whom were once imperial subjects, remain strained. Russia is a major foreign policy problem; even after the Ukraine fiasco, it looms large in the Turkish imagination. The Kurds and Armenians are still bitter enemies and relations with Greece are difficult. When asked by a German journalist why Greek military spending was so high despite an economy in the ICU, the prime minister explained that it was because Turkey rather than Denmark was next door. Israel is an outlier. On occasion, Erdogan stirs up hostility towards that country but Turkish and Israeli drones recently worked well together to slaughter Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, an event largely ignored in the West. Both Turkey and Israel (and Britain) are very palsy-walsy with the tyrant in Baku who desires a greater Azerbaijan with large chunks of Iran and Armenia thrown in. Yes, it would be nice to ditch Erdogan from NATO but his location is so sweet. His goons beat up protesters in Washington DC for crying out loud and nothing was done. I fear he may be keeping his membership card for a good while yet.

Like most dictators, Stalin was preoccupied by the threat of enemies within the state; bizarrely, his purge of the army even continued after war broke out! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1941_Red_Army_Purge#:~:text=On 29 January 1942%2C forty,were sentenced to death by Warnings from Britain of an impending German invasion would have carried little weight with him - desperate for allies, they would say that, wouldn’t they? - but abundant evidence of a much stronger variety was closer at hand: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-13862135 Why did he deny all this to himself? He must have known that his own actions had weakened the army. Facing the reality that he had weakened his country at such a critical moment may have been too painful to contemplate. When Hitler did invade, Stalin eventually fled to his dacha and thought a deputation that included General Zhukov had arrived to depose him rather than bring him back to Moscow.

Well, offhand even I can think of a few things to do if an attack was feared that would not involve arresting anybody: sending extra troops to the border; improving the barrier, giving it more utility facing towards Israel if breached; building in greater redundancy in the communications system. Millions of Muslims were imprisoned and tortured by a totalitarian state, you mean. Have no doubt they’ll do the same in Canada to all of us if they get the chance.

Better than most? Whom are you comparing his record with? If he had cared more, he might have gotten off his butt and saved more lives.

I don’t find this claim plausible at all. If they knew they would have done something about it. Bear in mind Hamas doesn’t have aircraft carriers to hide. These land, air and sea assaults were decidedly low tech. What it does have is an extraordinary network of tunnels.

Looking back at 9/11, one might say there was a failure of imagination by the Americans. Bin Laden had made his intentions clear but they just couldn’t see how he could carry out attacks in the US. On the other hand, there’s only so much a free society is prepared to do to surveil the population and that’s a good thing.

Again, Hamas understand this. They’re not stupid. They know Israel has compromised thousands of Gazans one way or another. Apparently, many of the Hamas political leadership were not informed of these plans until they were happening. Nobody is fully trustworthy. Obviously, the 9/11 hijackers were supported by a much larger number of people than that abroad and quite a few in the US as well. Surprise attacks of this type have happened throughout history.

Organizations adapt. Hamas absorbed their own previous failings with informers and kept the big picture knowledge of this operation among as few as possible. Most of those involved would have had no idea what they were training for or when. They also went to great pains to portray a passive posture to the Israelis, giving them the impression they weren’t in a position to launch a large assault. As with 9/11, there’s no need to propose a bizarre conspiracy to explain an intelligence failure against a resourceful enemy with nothing else to think about. The IRA put it this way after the Brighton bombing that almost killed Margaret Thatcher: “You have to be lucky all the time. We only have to be lucky once.”