the chances that this woman was going to blow anything up are remote and slim and chances are higher that she was being ironic. the crown is supposed to be obliged to demonstrate that a threat is real and imminent and isn't merely the result of somebody shit-talking and airing frustrations. this should not have led to jail time and that it did is feeding into the narrative leading to the frustrated shit-talking in the first place.

nonetheless, however seriously or unseriously the woman ought to have been taken, i want to strongly suggest that this is the wrong tactic and wrong approach. it is apparent and obvious that concerns about the behaviours and beliefs of the muslim minority are valid considerations, but these considerations should be addressed by aggressively enforcing british law and not by declaring jihad against them. british law should be enforced as paramount, not concerns about cultural sensitivity.

so long as the muslim majority adheres to british law, there is no longer a concern about their behaviour. that's where the issue needs to be addressed.

it is not outside of the bounds of probability that, at some point in the future, the mosques might become centres where islamic militants organize to try to take over the country. that is not unlikely at all and it would require a different response. however, it isn't true right now, and concerns about beliefs and values need to be kept to scale in a secular society.

muslim clerics in britain should be made to feel welcome in order to integrate them, which will help them adjust to secular norms and values, which do not exist where they came from. we want the mosques to be as bland as the anglican churches and their followers to get bored with them and willingly embrace apostasy. threatening to blow up the mosque, however unseriously, will have the opposite outcome, it will make muslims feel outside of the british culture and have them cling to their faith as a sense of identity. that's when they lash out at a society that doesn't accept them.

i'm more concerned with organizing an education program to help turn the rioters into activists than i am with sending them to jail. these rioters need to be taught better strategies to get to the outcome of better integration in a dominantly secular culture.

an example of a better tactic would be to rent an area close to the mosque and turn it into a gay bar, and then instruct the gays to try to make friends with the muslims, or at the least to exist in their midst, to normalize them to it. there has not been a clear motive released yet, but the assumption is that it was a cultural attack; this is a 17 year-old stabbing little kids, so it seems unlikely to have been the result of some kind of rejection. so, you bring the dance classes closer to the mosques and you assert your right to exist in the presence of their religious institution and you try to integrate and welcome them into your cultural activities by laying down the cultural expectation of tolerance in the muslim community for non-muslims. you drop the need for them to be tolerant on their lap, and you prosecute them if they reject it, you don't threaten to blow them up, however disingenuously.

this is important. it has to be done.

we just fought this fight in the west a few decades ago, and the tactics should be fresh to native britons, who today are overwhelmingly atheist. this actually isn't hard. britain just went through this with the christians and just got out of it. the tactics are the same, and they should know what to do, but it requires these teachable moments for the poorly educated, who need to be better organized.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/aug/14/woman-53-jailed-over-blow-the-mosque-up-facebook-post-after-southport-riots

i'm a revolutionary socialist, but angry white supremacist mobs is not my revolution.

it does, however, tell me that something is afoot.

to be clear: breaking stuff and beating people up isn't just bad, it's stupid. that helps nothing, that accomplishes nothing. that is not a policy. that is not a protest.

but, this isn't a couple of thugs. this is a huge, mass movement of people in britain that are angry and scared and don't have the education or capacity to react more intelligently.

yes, there's a public safety issue, and that needs to be the first priority. but, the state needs to react to a festering problem. it can't just gloss over it. it's not bad apples. there's an ideology at play here that needs to be nipped at the bud.

this is something that you see repeatedly in history, and especially in european history, as it's something that white people are a little bit closer to. white people don't like systems of control and dominance and don't tolerate it the way that people of other races and cultures do; white people are far quicker to start breaking stuff and burning stuff down and while it's generally a function of low ability and poor education it also gets a fucking point across: that's when the state needs to adjust.

elon musk is probably wrong, for now.

he might not be in ten years if something isn't done to change the status quo, and that's not a good thing.

a picture of fanboy david bowie very excited to meet his hero, frank black.

who is the rock god here?

hard to tell.

it's both.

there are some things that need to shift and these minerals will help, but if we replace intensive carbon mining with intensive cobalt mining we may not even be reducing total emissions at all.

we have to think past suburbia and private transportation. canada has incredible hydro electric potential to build and it can fuel efficient public transport if we design our cities correctly. it's a travesty that we lost that vision some time in the mid-20th century in favour of such a wasteful hyper-individualism in transportation.

unfortunately, both of the major political parties are seeking to build profitable industries first and foremost and the sad irony is that it doesn't look like consumers are coming with them. 

i'd like to see some polling on this. how many people in toronto want cars at all, carbon or electric? how many would rather toronto build a new york style public transit system, so that almost nobody has a car?

the government at every level is seeking to prevent that because it would reduce employment in a major industry and hurt foreign investment but it is what the planet demands and i suspect it's actually what most people actually would prefer.

so, how do we get past this, then? we can't just call elon musk or bill gates and ask him to do it. it has to be government driven.

elizabeth may is entirely gung-ho about mineral mining and the green party doesn't offer serious ideas on this issue, unfortunately and perhaps surprisingly for most people. the ndp is going to listen to it's unions.

it should start at the municipal level.

so, i'll say this to toronto and vancouver and montreal - organize a car-free city and show us the way. show us how many jobs building the infrastructure will create. show us how to generate the clean electricity to power it. build the plans. then ask for funding.

if you leave it to the federal parties, they're just going to keep the existing economy in place and try to swap oil for natural gas powered hydrogen and tell everybody how much money they made from it.

https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/august-2024/critical-minerals-green-shift/

if the conservatives are the extreme right and the liberals are the moderate right, then what does this intend to be?

the moderately extreme right?

the extremely moderate right?

if we're lucky, it could help the ndp by taking both of the right wing parties down a little.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-future-party-launches-1.7294230

does paul know that stevie is blind?

i mean, everybody really does look the same to him. everybody's black. he doesn't have to be colour blind to ignore race. it's really not there.

i'm pointing this out because it kind of sends a weird message all of these years later. paul could've done a song with michael jackson, for example. why did he pick the blind guy, to whom race literally does not exist for, to do the racial harmony song?

was the blind guy the only black guy willing to do it, or what?

did he call up other black singers first?

"whaddya think i'm blind, paul? no way."

i'll take my chances on divine wrath, mr. khamenei.

i would suggest you concern yourself more with the very real, human-orchestrated fury of the united states of america.

are the people trying to get rid of netanyahu extra excited about the return of naftali bennett to the pmo?

the turks, of course, as the successor state to the ottoman empire and the eastern partition of the roman empire, have a long history in the levant and northern africa.

could the turks stabilize gaza? 

yes, they certainly could, but gaza would then have to deal with a turkish military occupation instead of an israeli one, and ask libya or cyprus or armenia about that. the turks would be unlikely to leave.

however, turkey would be unlikely to be much of a threat to israel, as well. they may turn gaza into a naval base, but that would just give american vessels in the region somewhere safe to park. it would give the palestianians jobs, which would be a major breakthrough (mass unemployment creates economic reliance on hamas).

it ought to be egypt that does this, but if they refuse to do it, and turkey wants to step in, egypt will have to deal with the long term consequences of it's own negligence, which it outright refuses to do.

the idea of putting the palestinian authority in charge is a non-starter. fatah is overwhelmingly unpopular. the palestinians themselves will try to overthrow them.

it's not a bad idea, really. it's up to the egyptians to make that decision.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/08/14/world/israel-iran-hamas-gaza-war

biden is certainly leaving a helluva mess for the next president to deal with, anyways - ukraine, iran and, at this point, i'd expect a flare-up in korea or taiwan, as well.

islamic extremists are targeting taylor swift, and it's easy enough to understand why. yes, she's jewish, but that's probably not it. older people may see her as a silly, vapid pop star that at this point has been just copying ideas from the previous generation for over a decade, but throngs of young women of every race and background see her as a role model and inspiration. they're targeting her because she's a threat to conservative islamic cultural values.

i've got some issues with third wave feminism, but this needs some solidarity. we've got attacks in britain and canceled shows in austria, and i'd expect more threats and attacks are coming up. i would strongly doubt she wants to sign up to be a flash point in the new culture war (which is increasingly secularism v islam, rather than secularism v christianity), but she's been nominated and she has a responsibility to rile up her fans a little. her fans have the right to dress and act how they want, and she should remind them of that whenever she can.

maybe she didn't pick this fight, but she's gotta fight it.

iran has more guns but israel has better guns. israel should in truth make quick work of iran if it comes to it, it shouldn't even be close.

however, the thing israel wants to be a little careful about is the difference in population size, but that itself comes with some clarification.

remember: we don't know if israel has nukes or not. we think they do.

in a very long slog, iran could potential just out-die israel, and the truth is that they are crazy enough to perhaps try. that's the caveat for israel; if iran is in this until the end, killing 15x as many iranians as there are israelis may be a challenge.

yet, if you add up active + reserve (that is trained soldiers), it's actually more or less even, which says a lot about israeli culture and miiltary preparedness. despite the fact that iran's population is 10x as large, israel can put as many armed soldiers on the ground, and they are without question better trained.

but, this is almost certainly a moot point. any actual war is going to be fought in the air, and iran is going to get quickly obliterated.

perhaps biden could call mr. khamenei up and explain to him that the real supreme leader has an order for him.

that's not a suggestion, mr. khamenei, that's an order.

the one and only person that the white house should be referring to as the supreme leader is diana ross.

i've also noticed that the spokespeople in the biden administration have begun referring to the ayatollah as "the supreme leader".

can you stop doing that, please?

if you want to maintain the cordiality and professionalism, mr. khamenei is sufficient.

thanks.

very seriously.

how hard would it be to bomb the ayatollah's house?

not hard at all.

toppling the regime in iran would be the best possible thing to happen in the region and any events that lead to that outcome should be supported by leftists everywhere.

death to the ayatollah.

death to the mullahs.

biden was keen to start a war in eastern europe, where the west has no enemies, and keen to keep the peace in the middle east, where every country is america's enemy.

he gets the world completely backwards and he always has.

why don't we get a quick peace deal in ukraine first, leave the russians alone and then launch a war for regime change in iran and saudi arabia at the same time? that sounds like a foreign policy i'd support.

who would've thought it was possible for biden to act weaker than he looks?

the president should be telling the asshole ayatollah that he's not interested in what he has to say and he has five minutes to sit down and shut up and if he's still standing in ten minutes then tehran will get immediately nuked.

if you want the cubans to fuck off, joe, all you need to do is evacuate miami.

easy stuff.

what's the hold up? hurry it up!

if you want kim jong-un to leave america alone, all america needs to do is pull out of the pacific.

easy peasy.

get to it joey.

hey joe.

you know if you pull out of south korea, maybe the north koreans will stop bugging you. 

it's something to think about.

ugh.

what kind of messaging is this? what side is he on?

can somebody shuffle him off to a beach or something, he's just making an ass of himself. he complains about his "legacy", but if he wanted to protect his "legacy" he shouldn't have run for an office that he isn't capable of running in the first place, and never was capable of running.

biden is the worst foreign policy president since dubya.

it makes you wonder if he's selling arms to iran under the table to raise money for some shady project in ukraine or something.

https://www.axios.com/2024/08/13/iran-israel-attack-gaza-hostage-ceasefire-deal-biden