-TSS-

I don't think Biden is going to run for re-election even though he says now he will. He is clearly getting worse by the day and dementia is not something which would heal with time, quite on the contrary. The idea of him getting re-elected and lasting until 2029 is just not believable. The important thing though is that he completes this one term so that there's not goibg to be that cackling Kamala as president. Who's going to be president in 2025? Trump? No! He will be banned. Everybody is saying that Newsom would be the candidate but California has not really lately been a state that others would like the entire country to become like.

The economic system is such a pyramid-scheme that it requires constant growing population. That's impossible to go on forever though. The birth-rate has plummetted all across the world. Africa is the only continent where it is still above the replacement-level. The population is only increasing because we are lioving longer but there will be an unprecedented sudden population.collapse sooner or later.

Canada will be all right. It will always be an attractive destination for immigration which will patch up the low birth-rate unlike many European countries where the birth-rates are so low while the population is ageing that the best advice is to stay in shape because in the 2030s and onwards being in some nursery home is going to be very nasty. Countries such as Italy and Spain are projected to have their population halved by the end of the century.

I looked into the statistics of demographics of Canada. Just like in every other western country the birth-rate is well below the replacement-level of 2.1. There really isn't a country which could be called western which would have a birth-rate above that critical level. However, the age-structure of the population of Canada is that young that despite the low birth-rate births still outnumber deaths unlike in many European countries including Finland where it is the other way round. Even though immigrants especially from Middle-Eastern and African countries have a much higher birth-rate than the indigenous population (I know in Canada's case you can't use that term but let's not go into that, you know what I mean) even the birth-rate of those immigrants is lower than what it is in the countries of their origin and the second and the third generation immigrants don't have that much higher birth-rate than the population on the whole.

Isn't there a long term-target of 100m people in Canada by the end of the century? That would be a 1% annual growth of population every year for 77 years.

You're right. Canada's population is the size of Poland and nobody in Europe refers to Poland as a small country.

Canada's population is large considering the latitudes of Canada's location but yet they think it'¨s small because they compare it to a certain other country.

If a cat was born in a horse-staple... However, if the Scottish people re-elect the SNP under his leadership then that is what they want. We'll see,

I think there's never been a time that a young generation wouldn't have blamed the generation above them for their problems. Or that the old generation wouldn't have thought that the young generation is bone idle lazy.

You probably know better than me about catholicism in Central- America and South-America whether it is still as strong as it used to be some decades ago. I honestly don't know. However, here ion Europe the Catholic Church is in a steep decline.

You're right. Secularisation is a very western thing. Elsewhere in the world, especially in the so-caklled third world countries, religion still reigns supreme. However, speaking of catholicism in the western world nobody can deny it's gone down and fast. In Ireland only in the 1960's the mass -attendance was 90%-ish. These days it is like 10% and a few years ago they legalised abortion. Poland has a reputation of being a devoutly catholic country. They still have banned abortion but they have a very low birth-rate. Pure catholics reject contraception. Either most Polish people don't care about the church's position on contraception or most Polish people are virgins. Guess which alternative is more likely.

A hatemongerer of the first order. Yet still better than his predecessor. We in the west seem to have come to the stage that not only foreigners come into our countries but they also become leading politicians. Imagine it the other way round. A non-jewish PM of Israel. That just would be impossible.

Christianity is on decline all over the western world and no other creed as much as catholicism. Somewhat telling that the church in France must import its priests from its former colonies as the French people no longer want to be priests.

At the moment the idea of disintegration of the USA is unthinkable. Figment of someone's imagination. But that's now. Things can change very quickly. Nobody thought a few years prior to the disintegration of the Soviet Union that it could even happen.

Aren't some of the constituencies, or ridings as you call them in Canada, about the size of a European country while others are the size of just a couple of easily walkable blocks in Toronto and Montreal?

When I was a kid I was wondering why all those Spanish-speaking countries in South- and Central-America are different countries as they are all Spanish-speaking anyway. Of course later on I learned that despite sharing the language there are huge cultural differences and a huge Spanish-speaking Estados Unidos just wouldn't work.

In 2026 Canada will be the co-hosts together with the USA and Mexico.

I wonder how many people who are in favour of Russia actually only support their system of government rather than the country itself. I mean people who thought the Soviet Union was great but who can't stand Putin's Russia or the other way round. Then how many people are real Russophiles for whom Russia is always right no matter which regime or ideology is in power.

Russian military might has always been based on bluff. This war has truthfully exposed the state of "the second best army in the world". Their only strength in the military sense is that they don't run out of cannon fodder any time soon as life is cheap.

I checked the map and I was somewhat surprised how southern Canada actually is. I thought a much larger proportion of Canada would be north of the 60th. Kinda ruins Canada's reputation of being a winterland. Yet something like half of Canada's territory is north of the 60th and 1/40 of the population live in that area. That must have created serious challenges for the federal government. In Finland we are told that of all the people north of the 60th something like a third are Finns as Finland is entirely within that area. Has to be admitted though that the Gulf-stream makes life easier. In Canada you don't have that advantage.

Is that firing by humiliation some sort of American culture? I mean you must clear your room immediately and you are escorted out of the building with a box in your hands.

I think also Canadians refer by veterans the generation which is almost all of them are dead by now. The USA, on the other hand, produces every once in a while a fresh supply of veterans.

What is the population of Canada north of 60N?

I'm beginning to think that for many Canadians Trudeau is becoming like a reverse version of Trump. I mean he will be talked about long after he has gone.

Big countries are resented for meddling in the affairs of smaller ones but yet they are expected to have an active role in international politics. It's a fine line to get that balance right. Germany for example is a European superpower but it is not interested in having a global role. That's why it is often criticized for not acting like a country of its size is expected to.