don't listen to me.

listen to this guy.

he knows a little about economics. that's the rumour.

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-stupidest-trump-move-so-far

there is no ambiguity that trump's threat to put a 10% tariff on europe if it opposes invading greenland has no abstract basis in law, and there is no conceivable way to justify it.

the congress needs to be looking at passing legislation that prevents the president from even saying that.

right now, it does not appear as though the nazi government in syria has managed to get to the isis prison in al hol.

if they do, they're going to release them all, to wreak havoc, and there's a lesson here: it's better to kill a nazi than to imprison or try it.

my understanding is that the kurds, who can defend themselves, are withdrawing in self-restraint. they're looking for dialogue before they react. if they have to, they can try to move back in, but their decision to do so will be connected to demographic considerations and not to maximizing surface area.  

that's smart on it's face.

unfortunately, i do not believe that the syrian government is acting independently of american military command and would expect that if the nazi syrian government is moving to take control of territory, it is with american approval, and no american mediation is coming.

this article, for example, is utterly brutal. it's interesting that trump is using the "sick man" language because this is straight late ottoman propaganda.

it would indeed be expected that the arabs in the area would be annoyed by a kurdish military presence, as these were the nazis that supported the jihadist groups in the first place. the kurds have indeed put a lot of people in jail, for the reason that they are jihadist terrorists. they operate large prisons of isis collaborators.

the narrative present in the cnn article is something like german citizens complaining that the allied occupation is rounding up all of the nazis and putting them in jail. why can't they leave germany to govern itself in peace? what has germany ever done to it's neighbours, anyways? right?

if you understand american foreign policy, and how it uses media to confuse people and manufacture consent, this kind of propaganda shouldn't be surprising to you. but i still find this article to be galling and unnerving in it's contempt for truth and decency.

in fact, if you understand the history of the region, you know that the arabs are recent migrants into it, and that they were resettled by the ottoman turks during a period known as the armenian genocide. the indigenous peoples of the area were assyrians, armenians and kurds, many of them christians. the turks tried to wipe them out and replace them with arabs because they weren't muslim enough or muslim at all. by acting as though anybody should give a fuck about these colonizing arab groups, that slaughtered the indigenous people of this region to enforce their religion on them, a process which isis was essentially continuing, the tone of the article is fully upholding the validity of that historical wrong. the ongoing genocide of the indigenous peoples of the upper euphrates-tigris valleys and their replacement by muslim arabs is one of the most brutal issues of our time and something that the west has been fully complicit in.

i've been critical of obama, as many leftists were, but his policy in upper mesopotamia is one of the few things he got right. the americans finally stood up to the systemic genocide carried out by muslims on the indigenous population. but trump seemed non-committal and biden completely reversed the policy. now, here we are - the united states is openly aligned with isis and complicit in the ongoing genocide (which is about to ramp up) and cnn is posting propaganda about it to convince you into supporting it.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/18/middleeast/syria-military-takeover-kurdish-sdf-explainer-intl

the western propaganda around syria is exceedingly thick, but it's easy to get through it if you understand what's happening.

i'm going to summarize what actually happened in syria over the least 25 years, first. i've done this before.

- many years ago, syria and iraq were governed by the same political party, the ba'ath party. this was a secularist party that adhered to something called arabic socialism, which was socialism with arabic characteristics. it was aligned with the soviet union.

- we know what happened to iraq's ba'ath party, but the ba'ath party continued in syria until the dictator there, who was pretty bad but not as bad as saddam hussein, died and was succeeded by his son

- the actual dictator assad had two sons. one was groomed for power, and he was pretty brutal, and this story would be different if he had taken over, but he died young. instead, power passed to the second son.

- the second son was an eye doctor in britain and had married a british woman he met in britain. they had to bring him back from britain.

- in some ways, this second son was nothing more than a powerless figurehead, and not any sort of dictator at all. the actual power was in the junta, and the continued to act as a branch of moscow's military command structure. during this period, syria was essentially a client state of russia, with little autonomy, and where the decisions were made in moscow and enforced by the junta. the younger assad was trotted out to wave to the crowds sometimes.

- however, assad was also a democratic reformer. despite western claims otherwise, russia is in fact a democracy, it's just an extreme democracy. it's a democracy with extremely real choices. we may have a hard time understanding that here in western democracies, where the parties are all the same. in russia, a democratic transition would not be a meaningless change of which party is in power; in russia, you have broad, important choices to make between toryism (that is what putin is. he's an old tory.), communism or fascism. as it does elsewhere, washington supports the fascist parties in russia, then accuses the russian government of stifling dissent when it jails the fascists. what russia does not have is a liberal democratic party with any serious support as that ideology remains unpopular in russia. there is an overwhelming tory consensus there, and liberal democrats often have to vote for the tories to block the communists, who remain the only serious opposition group. the russians don't like supporting authoritarian regimes because it makes them look bad, but they do it.

- assad was correctly seen as a weak ruler by the surrounding countries, particularly the saudis and the turks. turks and arabs don't like each other very much and don't have a direct border anywhere in the region. syria is a buffer state between turkey and saudi arabia.

- the saudi theocracy does not want democracy on their borders because they see it as a threat to their own system of government and consider it to be "western colonialism". they will routinely send in armed thugs to destabilize any sort of democracy in the arab world. they don't want it taking hold anywhere.

- that is what started the war in syria. first, the younger assad scheduled a referendum to chart a democratic transition in syria, with russian encouragement. then, the saudis sent their goons in to try to stop it. the turks moved in to block the saudis, and everything imploded from there.

- the younger assad was initially trying to realign syria with nato but, due to saudi opposition, he had to realign closer with moscow, and then everybody except the russians wanted assad out. 

- eventually, a functional coalition between the russians and kurds largely defeated the saudi-backed thugs. the americans have taken credit for this but, as was the case in world war two, it was actually the russians that won the war, and it's still not entirely clear what side the americans were even really on at all.

- that left assad in control of damascus with russian support, the kurds in the north, a small american force in the south (that appears to have been helping isis more than hindering it) and some remnant turkish backed jihdist groups that almost everybody, apparently including the syrian military, had forgotten about and wasn't taking seriously.

- then the turkish-backed jihadists launched a sneak attack about a year ago, with apparent american support, that succeeded in taking damascus by surprise. this did cut the saudis out, at first glance, as fighting isis remained the pretext for american involvement. 

- since then, this turkish-backed nazi/jihadist government has both identified itself as a stronger american proxy and taken steps to re-align itself with the saudis

- the result is that the jihadists have essentially won the war in syria and are now in control of syria

- as would be expected, they are carrying out ethnic cleansing against the same minorities that isis targeted

- after a few years of propaganda training through us media, including trying to generate empathy for "isis wives", who should be summarily executed with no sympathy at all, the americans are now openly supporting the jihadist groups under an apparent promise that they'll share the oil wealth if they take control of it.

- but this is not so much a switcheroo so much as it was kind of what was always going on. the americans were always supporting the jihadists, and the goal was always to replace assad with the jihadist groups. the kurds were always a temporary ally acting in their own interests and everybody always knew that. but the turks managed to chase the saudis out, so now it's turkish groups and not saudi groups. 

- now that the jihadists are in control in damascus like ankara, riyadh and washington all wanted, they are chasing the kurds out, as was always the plan.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/kurdish-commander-urges-us-to-intervene-in-syria-says-hed-welcome-israeli-help/

for many years, canada listed the pkk as a terrorist organization and not only did not have the irgc as a terrorist organization but even allowed canadians to send money to the irgc if they wanted. this was an utterly embarrassing and horribly backwards foreign policy position. in recent years, the government has finally listed the irgc as a terrorist organization, after it shot down a plane with hundreds of canadians in it. that's what it took; our government took no action against the irgc when it was slaughtering it's own people to govern a large country out of the back of a koran, but it finally acted when they shot down a civilian airplane, to our embarrassment and our deep shame. 

to this day, the largest terrorist attack in canada was by khalistani extremists. today, these same extremists and terrorist groups actually have privileged access to both of our major political parties and the sitting liberal government has gone out of it's way to protect khalistani terrorists from being held accountable by the indian government. it's deeply embarrassing.

then, we wonder why the world thinks it can push us around.

while the irgc is now a terrorist organization, as it should be, the pkk also remains a terrorist organization in canada. the pkk has never launched any sort of attack on canada or canadian interests, and has in fact been a staunch ally in the fight against isis, which canada was involved in. this needs to be immediately reversed, so that canadians can send money to kurdish freedom fighters in iran to help topple the fascist regime there.