it seems as though the disgusting, abject total losers that lived upstairs and have been harassing me for the last year have finally left. i'm struggling now to convince myself that they're actually gone. 

there was a woman upstairs for the last year that never ever left the house and it absolutely freaked me out. i'm having difficulty accepting that she's finally gone, that she's finally going to leave me alone.

i have ptsd as a consequence of childhood abuse. i don't have a history of hearing voices but i do have a history of flashbacks; i am fully confident that i heard everything i heard and that it was real in the sense that it was physically stated, that it was enunciated from an actual human's lips, but now the actual struggle with my actual mental health concern is about to begin, which is trying to convince myself that the flashbacks are actually flashbacks. i am absolutely expecting months worth of trauma, and the fact that i can't leave the house until the tenancy issue is resolved is simply going to add to the process.

are they really gone? really? or did i just hear a door close? did i hear a voice in the distance, or is it trauma?

it's going to take a while for me to process this, and i'm going to need space and patience to do it in. i know the tenants were drugging me, but i don't know if they were acting independently or on the order of the landlords or on the order of somebody else they were working for. i consequently don't know yet if this nightmare is actually really over or not.

i was waiting for them to leave to set up my new network and i hope that i can get back to working on something substantive soon.

the bds protests at the universities are unfortunate. the reality is that the best way to understand them are as a reflection of the demographic changes taking place in the west, and i think it should cause a moment of pause: do we want this outcome? it is not inevitable, it is easy to understand the causes and it is reversible with changes in policy.

the kids are wrong, but they're more confused than evil. this particular attack by hamas could not be justified and it demonstrates why hamas, as a brutal fascist organization, needs to be destroyed. the idea that hamas is fighting against israeli colonialism is idiotic; hamas is a brutal fascist dictatorship that wants to convert everybody to islam and kill all the fags. hamas is more ideologically in line with colonialism than netanyahu is. the correct position is to support the imminent and permanent and thorough destruction of hamas, and have subtleties about it if you insist.

however, there used to be marxist groups in palestine and they used to be a part of what they interpreted as a colonial struggle (i don't agree with the perspective, as the jews were there first, but i understand the argument. i actually support a one-state solution where all citizens have equal rights, regardless of ethnicity or religion.). what's happening is that the kids are basically reading out of date literature and then making the mistake of applying it to the current moment, and then having that mistake reinforced by their professors and elders, who are the ones that need to be denounced, not the kids. the kids learn what they're taught. it's truly the profs that are the ones making a serious mistake, here.

we can talk about root causes all day, and we should, but what i want to type briefly in this space is that it is clearly the israelis (and the egyptians, who i am pleased to see are finally taking some initiative on the matter, which is long overdue) that need to take the initiative in redesigning a post-hamas gaza strip because the palestinians don't currently have the prerequisites to maintain a functioning democracy. this point is being lost. you can't just take any tribe out of the jungle and give them democracy, there has to be pre-conditions met, and they cannot be met at the moment in gaza. if they repeat the same mistakes, they'll get the same outcome. i've been calling the israeli policy genocide since before everybody else was calling it apartheid (i may be the author of this shift in direction), but this is a genocide that is required to get out of the status quo, which is not desirable and is not sustainable. gaza cannot be a democracy and the people that live there need to be deprogrammed in a way that is not realistic; it is easier and safer to just wipe them out. somebody else then needs to take over and focus on infrastructure and education and development. eventually, one day, they can start talking about a democratic state again.

the lesson from this process needs to be that you can't just build a fence around a city and expect the people that live there to adjust to it. i've read some things recently that suggest the israelis understand this and that there's a broad consensus developing that the root cause of palestinian terrorism is the tactics deployed by ariel sharon, which were in fact not favoured by the israeli civil service, military or intelligence apparatus, who wanted a mini marshall plan rather than a neo-auschwitz. unfortunately, sharon won the argument and we now have the consequences of a neo-auschwitz, and it is going to create terrorist headaches for decades. that mistake needs to not be repeated.

what the kids ought to be saying is that there needs to be serious shifts in the israeli's approach to a post-hamas gaza, that there needs to be a focus on infrastructure and development and that egypt needs to be taking a primary role in the process. they should not be arguing against dismantling hamas, but they've been confused and misled by simplistic and warped ideologies that are difficult to apply to a post-industrial world. they're just kids, and they're just trying to be cool.

it is ultimately of little consequence what the kids think, but i am concerned about the violent nature of the crackdowns, which would appear to be unnecessary. the admins and higher ups are embarrassed by the riff raff and want to mow the lawn of the protest presence. well, again, we need to ask: do we want this outcome? if not, we need to change our immigration policies, and we need to pay more attention to who we hire to teach our kids.

when these people talk about the culture of northern europe, they use terms like colonialism and draw attention to the crimes of the past. however, they expect everybody to follow the rules of their culture, and complain that they're being oppressed when other people don't obey their dictates; not following their rules is oppression, but expecting people to follow our rules is colonialism. it's a double standard.

worse, it's a historical half-truth, at best. in reality, arabs invented colonialism as we understand it today (i mean, the greeks had colonies, but...) and islam is in fact the most brutally colonizing force in human history, worse than christianity by several degrees. besides, what we call "european colonialism" was carried out by the largely middle eastern in origin cultures of southern europe, orchestrated by the egyptian-origin religion of christianity and carried out primarily by olive-skinned and sometimes outright brown spanish, portugese and italians, many of whom even had some arab ancestry. when the various wars of the age of enlightenment came to an end, and the north of europe triumphed over the south, the result was that the northern europeans abolished the arab-originating slave institutions and undid the olive-skinned christian colonial projects, rather than continue or advance them. the result of white people taking over the world was the end of slavery, not the enforcement of it.

this double standard needs to be addressed and the hypocrisy needs to be deconstructed. we're long overdue for this backlash. as mentioned, quebec is ahead of the curve; this is a process that needs to happen. we need to protect our european, liberal, secular and atheist institutions and we need to make doing so a serious priority, lest we wake up in saudi arabia and not understand what happened.

sarah jama's disgusting outburst in the ontario legislature last week was a despicable act of disrespect for the cultural norms and values of the culture she is currently living in, and which has made an attempt to include her and encouraged her to thrive. it is long past the time that the historically pagan and white cultures of northern europe stood up for themselves in asserting the expectation that the cultural values of secularism and atheism be respected by foreigners that are visiting here and that our institutions be respected and our laws be followed.  such disrespectful outbursts need to be condemned in the strongest terms possible, and i would call on her to immediately resign. 

perhaps she could go to gaza and run for office there. i expect there will be some kind of elections there soon. i'd advise she pack a lunch.