this is the ideal first step - the russians and turks need to talk this out without the americans wasting their time and interrupting them.

for all of the propaganda about putin & erdogan, the reality is that they are both rational actors and should be able to work out a compromise that does the following things:

1. recreates the internationally recognized syrian borders, which is what the russians want - a return to normalcy.
2. find some way to do something with what are, in fact, kurdish militant groups camped on the turkish border and that will certainly eventually threaten the turks if left to incubate. these groups are going to need to be given safe passage somewhere: to iraq, to iran or to...russia.

i'll throw a wild card out there: the jews never warmed to the idea of a homeland in russia, but they've long been convinced they're semitic and belong in the middle east (whether it's really true or not). the kurds are a caucasian-iranian group that has lived in the zagros mountains as refugees for centuries, with meaningful ethno-linguistic roots in largely uninhabited areas of russia. at some point in the distant past, the kurds migrated in from the steppes, and then, centuries later, found themselves in perpetual isolation when the iranians were expelled from mesopotamia by the arabs, eventually adopting their religion but never being fully accepted into the new culture. this area is historically not iranian, but where armenians and semites, and then great empires, fought wars against each other; it follows that the best that the kurds can really hope for is to be a part of an iranian province, as an independent kurdistan could never be more than a minor iran - a "west iran", if you will, but the arabs in iraq aren't inviting the ayatollah in, either, nor are the turks looking for partition. i don't think i've ever heard anybody say it, but it's not a crazy idea; an autonomous oblast in the urals is more sovereignty than they're ever likely to get in an area of the world that they're really not indigenous to.

so, as an independent kurdistan isn't a sustainable idea in the long run (it would just be a temporarily existent "west iran" - even if it lasted 100 years), there's really two serious outcomes here: a reconstruction of greater iran (including northern iraq and eastern turkey) or for the kurds to accept minority status within the countries of the region. neither option is anything close to kurdish sovereignty, which is really geopolitically impossible in this exact location.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-to-dispatch-high-level-team-to-russia-for-syria-talks-140046

the next couple of days are actually going to be the warmest weather we've had in windsor since mid-october, but it's also going to be raining, so i'm stuck in the house until monday at the earliest.

i'm going to put everything off until monday morning.

it's really amazing how people won't get their head around it - total denial, but it's really because we're so hopelessly colonized by christianity.

"santa isn't a german god. no. it's saint nicolaus."

right.

listen - you don't need to get into this argument about whether it's saturnalia or yule, because they're actually the same thing. the romans are thought to have separated from the celts around the la tene period, and moved south from switzerland into italy. that's right - the romans had a german ancestry, and were ultimately created in the same way they were destroyed. like a snake swallowing itself whole? i dunno. but, i know that it's very well understood that the indo-european religions were all essentially the same, so when we see romans and germans doing essentially the same ritual at essentially the same astrological event, deep into antiquity, the conclusion one ought to draw is that the traditions had a common origin.

and, this tradition is not historically related to christianity, to judaism or islam - but it is related to the eastern religions, one example being hinduism. and, to understand santa claus, this is the tradition we need to look most directly at - not christianity, but hinduism.

for, everybody knows that shiva enjoys a nice glass of milk, when presented.

think about what your kids are doing for a second when they leave out milk and cookies for santa. what they are doing is offering a gift to the german god odin at the solstice, in hopes of receiving something in return. and, it wasn't that long ago that this was done by adults, who took the whole thing very seriously - as hundreds of millions of hindus in india do, still, today.

a christian holiday? hardly. that's as pagan as pagan gets.

so, how did we get from a sombre gemanic ritual, which certainly included blood sacrifices, to an infantilized, benign action involving flying reindeer and cookies?

the christian colonization of northern europe.

i just want to address what might be a misperception about the amount of time i spend by myself. some people may point out that i don't have a family or friends to spend time with, and argue that this is some kind of bad thing. but, as is the case with most components of the society we live in, i'm actually largely in disagreement with the premise.

but, it's not just my politics, it's my personality, although the politics no doubt derive from the personality. introverts are not figments of the psychologist's imagination; we do exist. i will remind you that the reason i live on disability is due to social anxiety, meaning i'm even clinically diagnosed with preferring to avoid people, to the point that i'm being excused from having to work (for the time being). so, how would one really expect a heavily introverted anarchist with extreme social anxiety to spend the holidays?

i'm not interested in having a family, and i've never enjoyed spending time with friends. but, isn't that just something that losers say as an excuse? it really isn't.

of course, i grew up in a family, and it is true that my father is now dead, but everybody else is still alive - if hundreds of kilometres away. what you might not realize is that i wouldn't have spent the holidays with my family even when my father was alive, and they were right in front of me. when i lived on my own, i would routinely reject family get-togethers, because i didn't want to spend my leisure time with my family - i'd rather spend it reading, or listening to and/or writing music. there were some years where i was working 50 hour weeks, or deeply invested in school. to me, the holidays were a way to immerse myself in my own interests, not a way to get to know my family. i needed the alone time. my dad could get usually get me out for a few hours on one day, but i made sure they knew that was going to be the extent of it; i would be completely absent from any family life for 20 out of 21 days, and fully on my own prerogative. even when i lived at home, i was the kind of teenager and twenty-something that spent the holidays in my room with the door closed. parades of family members and family friends would come through without me opening the door for more than a few seconds to acknowledge them. or, often, i would come out of the bedroom only to eat, and go back in the moment my last bite was finished, probably even taking coffee or even dessert with me. in some cases, i may not have liked the specific individuals involved, but i was broadly simply more interested in pursuing my own individualistic interests than taking part in a family.

today, i look at the idea of starting my own family as a danger to avoid, rather than a future to plan for. even if i were to accidentally find a partner, i wouldn't want to be around their family. and, i have simply never enjoyed being around children. i would be as terribly disinterested as i've always been - i may even find myself needing to get out of the house to relieve the stress from dealing with so many people at once. it's not outside of the realm of possibility to imagine me taking off to go for a bike ride, or even have a beer, while my partner is stuck preparing food and dealing with kids that i don't have any interest in. the simple reality is that i'm honestly much happier reading by myself.

but, what about friends? if you hate family, don't you at least want friends?

you should probably think that through, as it doesn't make as much sense as you think it does, but, sure - i've had friends. i've been to christmas parties. and, it's actually always been the same thing - people bunched together talking about video games or tv shows that i don't know anything about, leaving me horribly bored and nursing my beer. so, you go through the motions of going to the party because you're supposed to, but you don't enjoy it, and you really wish you were somewhere else. i would often find myself drunk at christmas parties, simply because i didn't have any way to relate to the people that were supposed to be my friends. i know: find new friends, right? except that when you put a group of introverted nerds in a room together, they all ignore each other and read by themselves.

i don't think friendship is possible in a capitalist society, but i'll spare you that rant for now. the point i'm making is just that this idea that "friends and family are what's important" is not a universal value, and there are some people that would argue that individual pursuits are the highest pinnacle of achievement, rather than identifying as a part of a group.

i don't want to share these days with other people; i prefer and even need the time alone, to myself.