SpankyMcFarland

It was chilling to see how excited Sunak was to interview Musk.

You may need to get out more and see what is happening in the world these days.

The day China achieves a critical technological advantage over the rest of world, watch out. It won’t matter where or who are you are, you will be personally affected.

If they were only fighting the federal govt that might make sense but they are not. There’s increasing competition within provinces to be the most shrill voice.

The problem is that they always want more, at which point a break-up becomes more likely.

Canada is becoming difficult to govern. Quebec was always a problem. Now the fissures are really opening up between East and West. I think provincial premiers have too much power in this country.

Here are Musk and Sunak talking about the future of work.

Lawrence Faucette has just died: https://edition.cnn.com/lawrence-faucette-second-pig-heart-transplant-dies/index.html

That is standard behaviour in parliamentary democracies and McCarthy made no effort to reach out to the Dems at all.

Literally everything is disputed there. What’s the point?

They should never have helped get Hamas off the ground in the first place in an effort to divide and weaken the Palestinians. Too clever by half. https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/

Right away I see ‘Palestinian lie’, Palestinians pouring into a city (something tells me Jews won’t be accused of doing that) etc. How old is Sol Stern now? Actually, 88. I’d say he’d be highly offended if anybody called him impartial on the subject. What I see are two related tribes fighting over land and using all the usual tricks in the book to undermine their opponent’s case. With history, I’m afraid everyone has their own.

That’s a fairly muscular form of Christianity you’re selling there.

Are you seriously claiming that no war crimes convictions means no war crimes? You’d make a good defence attorney. When it comes to war crimes, the Americans prefer to investigate themselves with predictably modest results.

I’m not sure that was a wise precedent to set.

It just happens to be Israel this time but it’s a feature of all wars.

War and crime go together like love and marriage used to do in the Sinatra song. You can’t have one without the other.

I don’t they have responded with such details, certainly not always with useful details. Actually, I don’t think they could at the moment, given the thousands of targets. You’d have to concede that it’s really difficult to distinguish an honest mistake from a deliberate assassination of a journalist etc. under these circumstances. A much simpler matter was the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh which the Israelis initially denied before claiming her death was accidental when the evidence became overwhelming. And, of course, it’s not an Israeli-specific thing either. All governments tend to do this.

No. Does it really? Again we have to take that on trust a lot of the time.

Collateral damage is an elastic concept favoured by countries with large air forces. Our perception of it would change markedly if it ever darkened our door.

But there is really no mechanism to determine whether the Israelis killed civilians deliberately or otherwise. If nobody from the IDF leaks it then how will we ever know what they were aiming at?

Israel’s willingness to allow a Palestinian state is an allegation not currently being tested. People like Netanyahu may make ambiguous noises about it in English but have spent their political careers making sure it can never happen. ‘From the river to the sea’ is how the maniacs of Hamas express their intentions; by contrast, ‘From the sea to Area C’ is not an outrageous denial of the possibility of a Palestinian state but a simple description of the current situation where Israel is quietly increasing its control of West Bank territory every day.

Nothing useful comes out of threads like these.

The question that arises at this stage of a government is whether changing the leader will lead to a rout rather an orderly retreat. JT is an excellent campaigner; it’s one of the things he does well. I wonder do any of his potential successors think, let him wear this and he can step down afterwards? Either way, I don’t think the Liberals will be out of the running for years on end unless Poilievre can move his party and supporters to the Canadian centre. He’s got some wild people in there who will cause him trouble east of Manitoba.

Mate, give me the ‘terrorists’ of the PKK over Hamas any day of the week.