the democrats need to run a serious candidate in 2028 because there's going to be a lot of shit to clean up.

kamala harris is not a serious candidate, and she's the singular reason they lost in 2024. she won't win a primary. it's a moot point.

they need to run somebody a little older with a lot of foreign policy experience, because whether americans like it or not, the president's singular role is foreign policy, and whoever walks in in 2028 is going to have to have a strong working knowledge of what they're doing.

i want to note some of the language used here. it looks...familiar.

i know who this guy is. he's very right-wing and not somebody i would cite. my argument is that this whole thing is backwards: iran is a fascist state, israel is a liberal democracy (with problems, but nobody is perfect) and the entire spectrum is reversed on this issue. the democrats are the conservatives now, and the republicans are the liberals; the liberals are swinging out to the right of the conservatives, who are not exactly running to the left, but are just letting the liberals cede ground to the ndp. in the united states, this is sort of a correction to historical norms. it's hard for us to understand it, but it's the 1960-2020 period that is actually weird. the democrats are supposed to be right-wing. the republicans are supposed to be liberal.

i don't want to confuse people. i'm a revolutionary socialist and i prefer liberals to conservatives, but the spectrum is broken, and a lot of people are misaligned. a lot of people are disenfranchised. revolutionary socialists believe peace is a naive, stupid thing that reactionary conservatives believe in. class conflict is perpetual. revolution is constant. iran is about the most reactionary, backwards, right-wing regime on the planet, and any socialist that actually reads would be fully in support of regime change in iran. that's the funny thing about the neo-cons - they're all trotskyists. they're all socialists, and they all sound like socialists, until you realize that they're all cynical and vulgar and applying marx to maximize greed. i'm not on their side for that reason. i'm the outsider, the actual socialist, that actually wants the kurds to win in iran. so you will see me break with the neocons quite abruptly. i'm not christopher hitchens, even as i insist that hitch was horribly smeared by both sides, and more than capable of defending himself, even if people decided not to listen near the end.

one of my favourite ironic quips is

i don't have a file, i have a filing cabinet.

variation:

the only target audience i'm reaching is the cia.

i know i have an audience but it's not clear who or what it is.

i've found several threads about me on fourchan, for example. these are creepy people that i wouldn't like much, and a lot of them are probably trump voters, but they seem to like me. they like my writing, mostly. i certainly do a lot of it.

but i'm a musician and i know i have an audience on that level as well, i've just never been able to entirely quantify or pinpoint it.

if you read this site a lot, realize i'm desperately poor. i live on disability. i come from a lower class background and have nothing to inherit. i'm cradle to grave poor, but i'm ok with that. i'm happy with little. what's getting under my skin right now is that i'm struggling to fight off an attack by investors that upended my life. the court rulings have been wrong, but i'm forced to drag people to the supreme court to correct them and the fact is it's not worth my time but i can't pay off the debt in any other way.

if you want to help me stabilize, there are some options on the right hand side of the page. there's a paypal donation link. i accept e-transfers to the email address on the side (the contact link). you could buy my music on bandcamp.

anything you can direct towards me will help get me out of debt, which is all i really need. i'm stable and happy but the debt is impossible, and it's the result of an unfair attack by investors that i was able to survive, but only due to my wits, and some good luck. this baseless and frivolous attack would have destroyed most people in my position, and the court facilitated it, instead of stopping it.

if i can get it to the supreme court, i should win. it's the superior court that's gone apeshit insane. the supreme court still works. most conservatives in canada will make the opposite argument.

but i'd rather focus on my art and i can't until i get this debt wiped out.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/avi-benlolo-two-week-ceasefire-100002879.html

if there are any left-leaning liberals growing tired of mark carney and looking to join the ndp or the greens, this weekend would be the right time to do it.

this is a potential ballot issue that could bring people to vote. carney may have opened a pandora's box, here.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-floor-crossing-recall-petitions-9.7157900

why would trump care about the midterms?

he's already passed everything he's going to introduce. he's a lame duck. he avoids congress as an ideological position. he'll veto anything that comes to his desk that he doesn't like.

control of the house in 2027 is of no real consequence or importance to trump's remaining years in office, and i wouldn't imagine that congressional considerations will have any effect on him at all.

https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/04/trump-has-incentive-strike-deal-iran-midterms-approach-what-cost

so, it would appear as though reports of iran mining the strait of hormuz were correct.

naval mines of this sort are almost completely forbidden under international law. 

iran should be sent the bill for the clean-up operation and be held liable for damages resulting from the blockade.

i would hardly expect the americans to encounter much difficulty in hacking into a data centre in montreal if they want to.

the concept of norad requires data sharing. the americans would be right to view this with extreme suspicion.

i don't think canada needs offensive fighter jets at all. i think we need missiles and drones.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/saab-lockheed-martin-fighters-data-defence-9.7157673

something that distant observers might found counter-intuitive is that the main opposition party in hungary appears to be to the right of orban, not to his left.

one of the things i do here is analyze polls. i have a degree in math, and experience in polling. i have a pretty good track record of avoiding algorithms and developing approaches on an election-by-election basis. elections are unique and always have factors to identify if you want to get a good prediction. standard models and textbook formulas don't work well in predicting elections.

i want to give you a heads up on hungary - the polling is unreliable. the outcome is entirely unclear.

every single government poll has orban ahead. every single "independent" poll is funded by the opposition. an analyst has nothing to work with, here. it looks very much like an iron curtain state.

something polling firms have found in iron curtain states is that even if the polling is clean, the respondents won't be honest with you. a very large percentage of people in these countries remain fearful about anybody calling them and asking them questions, and that works in any and every direction.

you further need to factor in the likelihood of corruption, both by the government and the opposition, which is high.

so, this is currently a toss-up. there is no way to analyze the data i have available to me, other than to label it unreliable. and, despite being an eu member state, i do not have confidence in the elections being free or fair - and that criticism is in both directions.

your guess as to how this turns out is as good as anybody's.

the gulf states have substantive military capacity. they spend a lot of money on defense. they should be embarrassed.

there is no utility in discussing the issue with lebanon, as they have no capacity to hold hezbollah accountable for it's crimes. if there was an international anti-terrorist force in lebanon to fight hezbollah, like there was in afghanistan to fight the taliban, israel might be obligated to let them take charge. but the demands on israel to stop amount to a complete suspension of international law, and it's replacement by some satanic amalgam of christian and islamic law that has no bearing in secular reality and cannot be taken seriously.

israel is going through the motions on this.

it gave lebanon the chance to talk, and it refused, which is consistent - it just proves yet again that lebanon is a failed state that is incapable of controlling terrorism and requires outside intervention to hold the terrorists accountable. israel cannot be expected to do more than this, and lebanon has rejected it.

http://www.adaderana.lk/news.php?nid=121038

my position is that these delays to allow trump to explore his delusions are just enabling the iranians to rebuild their air defenses, and it's just going to make the eventual necessary regime change more costly to accomplish in the end.

did the arabs get a little pushy in trying to tell trump what to do?

rumours have long been that the arabs have a history of being bossy with the americans. one wouldn't expect trump to react well to that.

now, i highly doubt that the iranians are going to give trump what he wants, but it's becoming clear that this is what he wants: to shift alliances away from the arabs and towards iran. the incoherence of this position doesn't matter. it's donald trump.

so, the arabs are calling starmer in, like the indigenous groups in canada insist on calling the queen, because that's who they made their agreement with. they feel shafted, and are venting, but it's their own fault.

i have repeatedly pointed out that i'm not a clairvoyant. i don't have a crystal ball. i can't predict the future. i'm a logician and an analyst, and i pay closer attention to empirical facts and less attention to ideology than most. i call it as i see it. and trump wants to be friends with iran and wants to throw the arabs under the bus to do it, but that almost certainly won't happen.

there remains no alternative to regime change in iran.

but trump is increasingly making this process more and more complicated and leaving a knottier and knottier mess for the next president to unravel.

what i'm getting at is that all evidence suggests that the americans actually signed this 10 point list the iranians are publishing, despite their refusal to admit it. why would they do that? it's not because they were going to lose the war. nobody questions that they would succeed at a ground invasion if they tried, but they made it clear shortly after this started that they didn't want regime change at all, they wanted to maintain the existing system, and capture it. he wants a hostile corporate takeover, not a revolution.

could it be that trump actually thinks that the iranian demands are in america's self-interest and more so than anything the arabs or jews are proposing?

the iranian demands are clearly not in the interests of the arab countries, but we know how trump thinks about this, and we know trump tends to agree with right-wing authoritarian states when given the choice. it's entirely plausible that trump would side with iran and tell the arabs to fuck off.

what we've been hearing from trump the last few days is suggestive of the idea that he thinks the iranian demands are beneficial to the united states and he wants a cut and not that he's seeking to maintain imperial position or the status quo in the region. he may consider the idea of closing the bases in the area, or moving them around, to be in america's self-interest, he may actively seek to personally profit from any tolls in the gulf and he may be happy to agree to pay for reconstruction, then hire himself to do it, at american taxpayer expense. 

of course, this is stupid of him. he's going to have to move to russia to pull this off. but he is stupid. we know that.

if you were taking bets on trump actually wanting to remove american bases from the middle east, what would be the odds on it?

the arabs are clearly fucking useless as allies, but people like me having been saying that for decades. that's not a surprise.

i've heard chomsky state a half dozen times that the saudis couldn't find the power switch on the weapons they were sold and would need american forces to operate them. then, what's the point? it's just machinery aging in a warehouse.

so, this is a weird and still developing situation but i would suggest the following right now:

short-term winners: united states

short-time losers: south korea, japan, india

long term losers: iran, china, ukraine, arabs, europe

long term winners: russia, israel, eritrea, djibouti, somaliand, egypt

i've also stated repeatedly that this was the arabs' war to fight, and they would need to fight it to win it, but it's looking relatively clear at this point that they are refusing to fight their own wars. there's a reason starmer is in the gulf instead of somebody like rubio.

the result of them refusing to fight their own wars is that it's looking like trump is going to negotiate away their standing in the region, in exchange for something of benefit to himself. 

that's what happens when you don't take responsibility for yourself.

as mentioned, the situation is still developing, but the arabs are likely going to be a major loser, here. 

trump will dump his losses on them to the extent that he can and they're going to have to eat it.

pacifists always lose.

while the situation is still developing, the united states clearly won the war and the biggest loser is clearly europe, and precisely because it picked pacifism over revolution.

the democrats are still fighting the last war, basically. and so is most of europe. it's at the root of the problem, but it's what happens when you do everything by surprise and can't even be bothered to give enough of a fuck to even try to brainwash people.

asking trump for an "exit strategy" in iran again demonstrates a fundamental level of ignorance as to the nature of the conflict. it's an idea lifted directly from iraq that the democrats are recycling and should not be. it reflects a poor understanding of the situation and makes them look stupid.

there were thousands of us troops in iraq. there are zero us troops in iran.

before you can have an exit strategy, you need to have an entrance strategy, and that is what trump is struggling with - they're trying to get in to iran and don't like the options available to them. the truth is that they have several options, but they won't implement any of them.

this "ceasefire" is consequently not a way out of iran but an attempt to get in to iran. the media is not understanding this. at all.

democrats should be asking trump to clarify what his entrance strategy is. right now, they appear to not really have one, other than to try to get iran to sign things they're never going to sign and essentially let them come in as business partners.

trump does not currently need an exit strategy because he hasn't entered iran. he can really just say "fuck it" and sail off. there's nothing to disengage from.

don't be surprised if trump does actually agree to pay for reconstruction in iran, then hire himself to do it.

they can call it the Iran Board of Peace.

maybe he can even get a hotel built there.