there were no extremist islamist groups opposing israel until the 80s. that took 40 years to develop, as a reaction to the israelis' continued insistence on asserting religion as the basis of the conflict.

it's hard to get rid of these things entirely, once they're started.

but, if you want the palestinians to stop resisting on religious grounds, the first thing to do is to stop differentiating against them on religious grounds. when you walk into an area and say "people of this religion have all of the rights, people of this other religion have none of them", then what would one expect besides resentment fuelled by religion?

i don't want to take these groups off any lists. they're not groups that the west should support or interact with. but, they didn't come out of nowhere. and, they will fade away if the root causes of their existence are addressed.

www.cbc.ca/news/world/hamas-hezbollah-denounce-isis-reject-own-blacklisting-by-canada-1.3192702

you realize that some of those seats - Fort McMurray-Athabasca, for example - have literally *never* elected a non-conservative, right?

there's a wide swath of alberta, saskatchewan and rural ontario that will never vote for anything except the most right-wing major party. the conservatives take these seats for granted. there's something like 100 of them. but, if that truth were an insurmountable advantage, the conservatives would not have spent most of the last century in opposition.

there's a lot of truth in the idea you're working with, which is that regional support does not translate well into national numbers. but, if you look at the regional breakdowns, what that suggests is that it's the liberals that are in extreme trouble because they don't have a regional base.

that 34% should be plenty to allow them to win, if it means strong showings in quebec & bc and a reasonable showing in urban ontario. but if the liberals end up below the ndp across the country, they could pull in 30% and get 30 seats; they could finish in second place in 300 ridings. and, while that seems extreme, it's my current projection given the existing numbers.

as you say, the conservatives will get their safe seats. but that's not a majority. and the ndp will take just about everything else.

..so long as they can continue to hover around 35%.

thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/08/15/Note-New-Dem-Strategists-Dig-Deeper-Polls/

updating the threat of terrorism is used to restrict civil liberties

i've corrected this mix, but i doubt you'll be able to hear the difference - because i can't. the eq on the bass was demonstrating the mixer problem that i've now determined is widespread. i've corrected it to be the same mix that i initially created in ram in a mathematical sense, but this is a kind of an idealist triviality. multiple a/b testing has determined that i cannot identify which is which. in fact, the difference file even nulls over the verses under the mastering compression.

initially written in 1996. recreated in feb, 1998. reclaimed june 29, 2015. corrected to control for malfunctioning electronics on aug 11, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-threat-of-terrorism-is-used-to-restrict-civil-liberties


https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/werso-smidits

there's a lot of face-saving rhetoric here, and some of it kind of falls apart: if iran could get a better deal by walking away, why don't they? because the truth is that they are walking away, into open russian arms.

but, what that means is that the crux of the argument underlying all this hand-waving is absolutely dead-on: this is the best you're getting. it's this or nothing.

the evidence suggests that iran is not building a bomb in the first place. but, the advanced air defense systems that the russians are moving in negate the need for a nuclear deterrent. and that deflates the issue.

the agreement essentially allows the iranians to dispose of their nuclear waste by sending it to russia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlG90dMLo50

so, it's official?

the neo-cons just lost. it's time for america to change course

the media discussion around the deal is essentially useless, because it's approaching it from a false perspective.

it doesn't matter what source of information you're drawing on. left. right. tabloids. academic literature. american media, or foreign media. they all frame the deal in the terms of america having iran where it wants it and being able to turn the vice until it gets what it wants. that is, essentially all media interprets the situation in the vacuum of american-iranian relations. when the rest of the world is mentioned, it's in order to help mediate, or give the us extra muscle in negotiations.

this interpretation exists in the realm of fantasy. and, one cannot understand the circumstances unless it is entirely discarded as absolute fiction - which is near impossible, because it is the only narrative available anywhere at all.

the issue on the table was never based on the assumption that iran is in the american sphere of interest, which is what is necessary to get to the existing narrative. rather it was always seeking to resolve the question of whether iran will remain in the american sphere of interest, as it was until the revolution - or if it will exit that sphere of interest and enter a joint russian-chinese sphere of interest. and, what the deal on the table does is "allow" that exit to occur. the republicans are rejecting the deal for that reason, not due to anything about enrichment. but, they are out of touch with the reality of the situation, which has changed to the point that if they follow through with their rhetoric on iran it is likely that they will start a world war. the importance of the agreement is being ignored because the narrative is based on an incorrect premise.

allow is in quotations because the truth is that the americans can no longer prevent this. and, this is a consequence of other policies. rising american militarism in eastern europe, european sanctions against russia, the continuing war in syria and the general recent western hostility against moscow have emboldened russia to behave a little bit more aggressively. the sanctions were intended to force russia to change it's behaviour. this was stupid, it was predictably going to fail and the people pushing for these sanctions were acting out of clear ignorance of the russian mentality. this is a failure at the state department of comical proportions; it is an error that should have never even been contemplated.

a few weeks before the deal got signed, russia announced plans to move advanced anti-aircraft systems into iran. this was something the russians had previously been threatening to do, but refrained from doing as a fig leaf to the west. they kept the threat up for leverage, but didn't do it to prevent hostilities. now that those hostilities have reached dangerous levels, they are following through with their threats.

these missile systems make the containment of iran difficult to the point of nearly impossible. they are an effective deterrent against an american invasion. further, they make the nuclear option unnecessary. we can no longer bomb iran to stop them from making the nuclear weapon they wanted to make to stop us from bombing them. in that sense, this is indeed a "permanent" solution - it's a permanent acceptance of the loss of iran.

once you understand the situation, you understand why the republicans are kneejerking - they refuse to accept the loss of iran. but, that does not make them any less foolish. as iran is now protected from attack by russian missiles, the entire basis of the sanctions regime has fallen apart. a refusal to sign the deal will not do anything to prevent the loss of iran, but will do everything to piss off the rest of the world. there's little indication that they care, but this is folly at a frightening level - and as mentioned could have disastrous consequences.

what we will see in the next few years is increasing iranian integration into russian and chinese organizations, like the sco. there's even talk about them being the first non-soviet state into the csto. trade will increase across asia, as eastern countries increasingly ignore the sanctions.

and the fact is that america cannot prevent this. it can only sign a weak agreement to save a little bit of face, and look mildly foolish rather than irrelevantly weak.

had they not slapped those sanctions down on russia, things may have been different. but, they set this in motion themselves.

america is not the emperor of the world. it can't just go around telling everybody else what to do.

Ryan Herich
It can tell iran

deathtokoalas
+Ryan Herich no. the takeaway from the situation is that it cannot, that the rest of the world will not stand around and watch any longer and that it is time to move on.

as time goes on, jessica is orienting herself further and further towards the looney right. the idea that the eu is the cause of the economic stagnation in europe, or that leaving it will benefit the british economy, is the most absurd economic ignorance from the least educated sectors of the british public. it's not the kind of perspective that deserves any kind of serious analysis. watching jessica conduct these interviews from positions of extreme ignorance (and yet unplaced confidence that is really simply arrogance) with people that are much smarter than her is increasingly like watching the village idiot walk into the local university with a bible and use it in a debate over equations. it's becoming painful, paul. this is a bad combination....

will the uk leave the eu? the conservative position is about two things: (1) leverage and (2) sovereignty. and, while it may be true that socialism is dead in europe, it has died along with "socialism" in russia. the underlying fear was never socialism, exactly, but that the continent would realign with the russians. this fear is no less valid today, socialism or not.

the various tensions playing out in the world are no doubt exacerbating this old fear. a german swing to russia would put the uk in a bad position, where they would have to make some choices they don't want to.

that's what this issue is about: not getting pulled into a german realignment policy, and rather maintaining the sovereignty to remain the junior partners in the anglo-american empire. we'll know how serious the british concerns about german alignment truly are by whether the referendum runs or not; if it runs, there's some serious movement going on. if it doesn't, it's just continued leverage.