this is not the history book i read in the 90s, but it may have been influenced by it.

https://arretsurinfo.ch/guy-mettans-book-on-russophobia-an-important-contribution-to-the-demystification-of-international-relations/

it's broadly understood that the saudi strategy was to install these islamist totalitarian regimes in syria and iraq to shut down the democracies that were developing in the region, but we somehow always ignore the threat that the turks, the only actual democracy in the region, pose to the saudi theocracy, when we analyze this. a moment's reflection should recognize this as kind of remarkable. if the saudis were really acting with the primary goal of stamping out anything approaching a democratic movement in the region, why wouldn't the turks be their primary target?

i've argued that the turks were in fact their primary target, and that what you see open up in this region around this period is a proxy war between the saudis and the turks for control over syria. that is something that a lot of the independent media misunderstood, in either seeing these jihadist groups as interchangeable or misinterpreting the turks as the hegemon. at this stage, we can surely all concede that these groups were in open conflict with each other from the start, and the turkish-backed rebels and saudi-backed rebels were never operating with a common set of goals. but, perhaps the severity of the potential consequences of this were never fully understood. what would have happened if isis had defeated the proxies and moved directly into turkey? one would not expect the turks to have much difficulty in defeating the saudis.

i think this is where the american support for the kurds comes in. america's master plan is not anything specific, but hegemony over the region; assad was once useful to them, and may, in the future, become useful to them again. a part of maintaining that hegemony lies in creating chaos (being the great satan), but a part of it lies in keeping the turks and arabs in a careful suspension - played off against each other, but without allowing them to come to blows.

the kurds, at this time, were a useful buffer state to keep the saudis and turks from coming to direct blows.

russophobia is actually a very old term. i first remember interacting with it in the late 90s, while reading a book i found in my step-mother's father's basement, after he died. this guy worked as a signals interceptor in alert during the cold war, so i found quite a few unusual texts in his basement. the book was old - 1940s. it was a detailed history of europe, from the collapse of rome to the end of the first world war.

i can't remember the name of it, and i loaned it out to never see it again, but russophobia is presented within it as a kind of a natural prejudice, much like anti-semitism, amongst the germanic christians of western europe, and even used as a kind of narrative device to describe the relationship between east and west. there was actually some very deep contact between the danelaw (the viking kingdoms in england) and the varangian settlements in kiev, which were also viking. there were actually royal marriages between these viking aristocrats in london and kiev - there was an anglo-russian alliance built around these viking kingdoms. this survived the norman invasions, and you'll note the normans were also vikings, but it fell apart during the mongolian conquests.

it is the mongolian dominance in russia that is at the root of this idea of russophobia which, like islamophobia, was not entirely irrational. the mongols were a powerful military force, and they penetrated deep into germany on multiple occasions. standing in the middle ages, a brit of any background - viking, anglo-saxon, celt or roman - would have good reason to fear the mongolian expansion. further, the mongols were of course famous for their barbarity. russophobia is understood in this context as a kind of traumatic stress disorder, built up over legitimate fear of the mongols burning london to the ground.

this text actually develops the narrative forward, from the crusades to the establishment of the russian principalities, through the anglo-russian competition of the victorian era and through to the first world war, as an imperative component of understanding british history. this is not just an old term - it's one that we have to grapple with to understand who we are, as descendants of british colonial rule.

i have looked into this further recently, and can trace the etymology of the term to the mid-19th century.

"Therefore it seeks in Russia the enemy it has lost in France, and appears to say to the universe, or to say to itself. "If nobody will be so kind as to become my foe, I shall need no more fleets nor armies, and shall be forced to reduce my taxes. The American war enabled me to double the taxes; the Dutch business to add more; the Nootka humbug gave me a pretext for raising three millions sterling more; but unless I can make an enemy of Russia the harvest from wars will end. I was the first to incite Turk against Russian, and now Ihope to reap a fresh crop of taxes." - thomas paine, who himself lacked the deeper context.

see, and paul is kind of making the same mistake that paine is - he knows the recent history, but doesn't understand the depth of it, doesn't realize that this is ancient, that it is not ideological but cultural, that it can be traced way past the cold war and great game to the schism of 1054, to the partition of diocletian and all of the underlying roman-greek contradictions in the empire....that this is the deepest civil conflict in western civilization, the longest war that we have.

rome became london became washington. and athens became constantinople became moscow.

i've been wondering for a while if the canada-saudi spat has something to do with oil production.

it doesn't seem to be playing out yet, but, in the long run, cutting the reliance on arab oil should also help us adopt a better policy on israeli war crimes.

i'd obviously rather get off oil altogether - there was never a good argument for shifting to dirtier domestic oil. but, there are geopolitical benefits to self-reliance, nonetheless.

people may want to ensure they're up to date on their stats.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/11/13/news/guess-where-quebec-gets-its-oil

they should ticket the driver for idling.

it's $100/ticket in ottawa.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/12/13/news/albertas-notley-hires-car-poke-trudeau-liberals-during-holiday-party

well, to an extent she's not wrong, but she's kind of setting up a strawman.

there's a lot of people that are questioning the science underlying the curriculum and/or rejecting the idea that science is important when discussing sex ed. the reality is that they're horribly ignorant and badly need to be educated on the topic, but the fact that they're able to sit there and spew their hate and ignorance with impunity is demonstrative of a failure in public education in the first place. so, we kind of have a catch-22, here.

it would probably be a good idea to have an independent body of scientific experts review the material and explain what is right and wrong about it. i understand that this has largely already been done, but it seems we need a kind of scopes trial around this, as the government seems to think that science is subject to political oversight (beyond the process of peer review). if the accusation is political bias, an independent scientific review should put that idea to rest - and if the government refuses to conduct one, or refuses to accept the results of one, reasonable observers should realize where the bias lies.

gender non-conformity is a part of natural variation for the simple reason that gender doesn't exist in the first place; it's not gender non-conformity that we teach, but gender itself that is taught. there's a spectrum, not a binary. and, it's a social construction. that's basic biology. but, these are the same types of people that reject evolution as a "liberal ideology", so there's always going to be a minimal success in getting through to them.

there's two categories here - people that refuse to listen to evidence, and people that haven't been convinced yet. we'll never get through to people that don't want to listen, but we need to recognize that we're failing to make the case for people that we haven't convinced, yet.

let them do an independent scientific review, and accept or deny the findings of it.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/trans-support-leader-ontario-debate-gender-identity-1.4910813