it's actually worth noting that the united states has not been involved in any of the myriad african conflicts of the last 20 years, opting instead to focus on building infrastructure in a limited geographic area in the southern part of the continent, and leaving the heavy fighting to proxies backed by financing from egypt, turkey, the uae, russia, france, the uk and china. the british funding in rwanda wa a scandal that the recent change of government has addressed. the biggest source of funding in congo for years has been the chinese.

for the americans to step into congo like this is a clear challenge to the chinese, but it's apparently being done differently. they're not backing an army by proxy. rather, they're selling the idea of stability as a way to increase american investment. war chases off investment. have we changed so much since the days of cecil rhodes and royal dutch shell?

probably not. but, the americans are at the least broadcasting an amount of distaste in engaging in coups and low level wars to physically hold mines and a desire to have free market access and open competition, instead. shit, it's like somebody finally took the kitchen debates seriously. trump as neo-nixon in a world where history moves backwards gains more traction every fucking day.

is this serious? it depends. it doesn't solve the fighting on the ground, in a literal sense; it doesn't address the religion, the ethnicity, the language or the piles of dirt they kill each other over. however, if the people funding this shit from a distance for financial gain are pulling out, it could slowly remove access to weapons and could lead to national armies chasing the rebel groups out of the mines, forests and rivers and holding it for bankers, instead. if the result is that the financial backers decide to stop funding war and start funding security, you could see a subsequent end to the religious and ethnic conflicts, and pretty quick.

the caveat is that if trump is really turning the clocks back, he'll be happy to bankroll a fascist dictatorship that will stop the warring at the expense of trampling over civil liberties, and you'll get a series of brutal dictatorships protecting the interests of capital by viciously attacking civil rights instead of generating instability and chaos, like we used to have in africa. that is what trump told us he wanted to do.

i think that a refocus on africa is overdue. after the universally panned iraq war, obama was supposed to have an asian pivot that never really happened and was supposed to refocus on africa, which he tried to do but largely failed to organize. trump 1.0 and biden both flailed, and musk's messaging suggested a foolish alignment with white farmers in south africa, which would really turn the clock back. this agreement in congo looks like a preferable shift in direction, on it's face.

i'm a little skeptical. the chinese might react by dumping millions into congolese rebel movements. however, i think this is the right direction for the west to take in africa and hope it continues. control over africa will be extremely important in the next 200 years - more so than control over the south pacific, and certainly more important than control over greenland. crucially, if the chinese get a lock on africa, they have a staging ground into the americas that can probably not be defeated. the americans need to meet them in africa to stop them. it's something the us has been broadcasting for 20 years, but hasn't been able to actually get done.

trump has the bbc on his side, now. this is like a zombie film. the whole town is a part of the cult. 

canada should interpret that very ominously, but should not be surprised. we were naive to expect otherwise.

i don't know why we didn't get on the phone with mexico, immediately.

i've been in the shower all day. my hair is fucking brutal. i'm stopping to eat and will likely be in there again all night.

it's something i noticed in the last apartment, and mostly cleared up in the hotel, but is now apparently back, at least temporarily: this kind of thin, gooey film in my hair. shampoo doesn't work. you have to sit in the shower for hours and condition it about twenty times before it starts to come out, and then it comes out like you're peeling gunk out of it. if you let it dry midwash, it's like you have hairspray or gel in your hair.

i would never put hairspray or gel in my hair, ever. yuck. gross.

i don't know what's causing this, but that's what i'm doing this weekend, is sitting in the shower and washing my hair. it might be second-hand marijuana smoke that's the culprit.

there has been some smoking downstairs, and i have made some complaints. that might be it.

who in canada would still shop at a bay like department store?

the answer is chinese women, and they make up a substantive demographic. white people would find something like this kind of stuffy and upper class, but the chinese like that.

she has a business case.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ruby-liu-hudsons-bay-leases-1.7573682

trump has been clear enough that his shift towards tariffs is a shift away from taxing profit or income and towards taxing consumption. he likes this precisely because it incentivizes saving over spending, which is a typical conservative fiscal position, and one that most economists today think is recessionary and regressive. it's less that class-focused old timey conservatives like trump disagree, and more that they don't care. it's class war. it helps those with inherited wealth at the expense of those that need to work.

this is why he doesn't like the digital services tax in canada.

but, trump was not elected as president of canada. he has no mandate. he should back off.

this is also a last-chance salad soup, as i'm using up various things that are at their ends. i will need to get groceries in the next few days, after i deal with my hair, which is overdue.

so, i used up the last bit of olive oil margarine in a big sauce pan by melting it, then chopping up the rest of the kale stalks and frying them in the margarine on medium for three minutes, covered. the recipe calls for celery; i generally sub kale stalks for celery. i the added an entire bulb of chopped garlic and let it go another three minutes, covered.

then, i added the chopped broccoli stalks and a full box of vegetable broth [946 ml]. i let this come to a boil (covered). i then cooked it (covered) on reduced heat for fifteen minutes, and for another fifteen minutes on increased heat.

i did not blend anything, i just transferred it to a bowl and added

- 100 g of old cheddar

- 100 g of mozarella

(this uses up the cheese)

- chopped fresh dill

- nutritional yeast

- frank's

- pepper

- cayenne

- oregano

- cumin

- paprika

- hemp seeds

- ceasar

again, this is a big bowl of soup and i don't think i need toast, or an orange.

cooking the broccoli makes it edible, but it's broccoli. recall. the broth would benefit from a beef cube next time, i think.

i mentioned i've been in a holding pattern since monday. 

i did finish organizing the living room early on sunday and early on monday, and spent a large amount of time on these days exfoliating, culminating in a shower on monday. i meant to get out to get some groceries, but didn't; i had an rx delivered on tuesday. this had to do with the condition of my hair, which has had conditioner in it since monday evening.

it's been the same thing day over day on tuesday, wednesday, thursday and now friday - wake up in the afternoon, exfoliate in the evening, eat around midnight, clean all night and and then sleep in the morning, all while listening to cds in the kitchen. at this point, i've got everything organized into the space it should be in, i've got everything off the ground and i've got the floors and general space relatively clean. i've had some plumbers and drywall workers here as well and they're still not done, but almost. i still have a large amount of organizing to do and am going to need to do things like buy new tables for the kitchen, but that can wait. i am overdue on that shower, which i should take this morning. i need to do laundry, i need to get groceries and i need to catch up on email in here.

after having the leftover gravy as soup on sunday night, i ate up the rest of the beets, which i should have had in the previous leftover salad but missed the existence of. it was five beets in ceasar and frank's, with yeast and hemp. this gave me brutal beeturia. i then had my monday meal early on tuesday morning, which was the ceasar without subs, except white bread for brown bread. this happened again on wednesday morning, for my tuesday meal. i then doubled up on thursday morning by having wednesday and thursday together, which amounted to 10 medium sized eggs, four pieces of toast and four slices of bacon. see, i normally but extra large eggs, but the food bank gave me medium eggs, so i made five instead of four, over two meals together. it was a good meal.

my friday meal was a little different. one of the things remaining from the last food bank run was a frozen pack of white things that i wasn't sure about but thought might be noodles and a frozen pack of red sauce that said "pad thai". i had to google this. they were rice noodles, with a fish sauce - like the tamarind i used to make sweet and sour soup. what do i do with this? do i cook it? nuke it?

i decided to microwave it in one minute bursts and stir it until it was warm all the way through. again, i don't eat microwave dinners, but i know how it is. frozen in the middle. i was not letting that happen.

when it came out, it was a big meal - the entire bowl. i added cumin, paprika, hemp seed, cheddar cheese, oregano and nutritional yeast, plus a can of chick peas. this was done to add vitamins, minerals and protein, as i didn't feel like this giant pile of rice noodles was very substantive, and wasn't even sure it would fill me up. indeed, i was hungry before noon, which is unusual.

the noodles came out chewy and al dente and i decided that can't be right, but i googled it and it is actually how they're supposed to be. the sauce was pretty bland.

so, i have to admit i didn't enjoy the frozen (store bought?) pad thai and will probably leave it for somebody else next time. i'd be tempted to use the sauce for something else and just make baked spaghetti out of the noodles. it would be a weird spaghetti, but probably better.

if i start going to the food bank more frequently, i'll teach myself a bit more about these rice noodles and what to do with them.

tonight, i'm making that broccoli soup i've been talking about. recipe in next post.