the iranan mullahs apparently wanted to negotiate with somebody that looked like a chimp, like they do, so they requested dogface vance to bark his way through the meetings. i'm sure that won't be a waste of time.

listen.

trump tried his negotiation tactic and it utterly failed. a lot of stupid people are going to say a lot of stupid things, but the reality is that the iranians are not rational actors. the venezuelans, who are actually a functioning democracy despite claims to the contrary, albeit one that needed leadership renewal, turned out to be rational actors. the cubans might turn out to be rational. the lebanese state is rational, it's just broken. the iranians are deeply irrational and cannot be negotiated with.

trump should have known that and he didn't because he's naive about the effects of religion on rational discourse. trump is not a christian; he doesn't believe in god. he is a vulgar marxist. he sees religion as a tool of control. he is correct; religion is a tool of control, but he seeks to manipulate it rather than dismantle it. he was not able to comprehend the blowback in iran. he saw them as allies that needed a kick in the ass, rather than as psychopaths that needed to be hung in public.

if trump won't learn his mistake, which was treating the iranians as rational negotiators, then the mechanisms to remove him from decision making need to be invoked.

the iranian state has demonstrated repeatedly that it must be destroyed with overwhelming force and extreme violence. get on it.

how do you like your icon now, tobacco industry?

but maybe that's the point.

because smoking hasn't been cool in decades. smoking has been for losers since the 80s. so, the industry is right, in that sense: justin bieber is the biggest loser i can think of and therefore the best person out there to sell smoking as 'cool'. in that sense that losers think they're cool.

i'm baffled to learn that he had one.

oh dear.

so gay.

i have a suggestion to mr bieber to really fill out the look: a handlebar moustache.

...and his wife has really recently bought into the new spring fashion trend of 12 year-old boy.

well, i guess that makes sense.

nobody expected somebody that dresses like justin bieber to like women.

it's worth noting how much of a disgusting homosexual faggot loser that justin bieber grew up into.

if that gross person ever tried to talk to me at a bar, i would pepper spray him and have him thrown out by security.

now, they use social media, because it's not regulated.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1766059/

focus on the statistics, not the advertising:

https://evidence.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/EVIDpha2500339

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-04-young-adults-historic-decline.html

therefore, somebody at philip morris sent justin bieber some money to pose with a cigarette and some instruments he doesn't play. and i bet his wife is pissed off.

the tobacco industry has a long history of viral advertising.

some of these are product placements. 

most of them are.

my advice is don't get habituated. smoke at parties; don't smoke at home, and don't smoke alone.

the problem i had quitting smoking was that it made me too tired to do anything. 

i quit at the end of 2015, after not really starting until very late 2001 and going cold turkey for long periods between 2001-2015. so, that was less than 15 years, but really less than 10 years actively smoking. i smoked socially at parties in the 90s; i was a teenager in the 90s. i turned 20 in 2001, which is about a year sooner than the people i went to high school with. it had to do with the fact that i turned 4 in january, 1985. the rules about going to kindergarten are that you can go to 4 year old kindergarten when you're 3, but only if you're born before new years. i couldn't go to 4 year old kindergarten until i was almost 5, because my birthday is in early january. therefore, i was almost a year older than everybody, all the way through school, even in university. i tended to get along with older kids - three or four years older - better than younger kids or kids my own age, so it was extra frustrating. but, it meant i could buy cigarettes at the store legally in january, 2000 and basically none of my friends could. except jon. he could.

cigarettes were cheap then, too. $3.00. $4.00. $5.00 was way too much. a gram of pot was $10 and has experienced zero inflation, since. you'd pay that for a six of something. so, it often made sense for me to show up at a party with a pack of cigarettes, smoke a handful when i was drunk and/or stoned, and hand the rest out to my friends, who couldn't buy them, or give them to rolling buddies to roll with.

what i learned was that the best way to wake the fuck up at 4:00 am or 5:00 am, after drinking alcohol and smoking pot all night, was to have a cigarette. cocaine wasn't an option for us, and i have never touched the stuff, nor did any of those kids. except jon. jon did. too much.

the reality is that nicotine is a powerful stimulant. if you don't smoke all of the time, smoking two or three cigs will wake you the fuck up for an hour, and then you can get up and go home and sleep it off.

but if you get hooked, which i didn't see coming and should have been more vigilant about, then the opposite thing happens - if you don't smoke ever hour or two, you fall asleep. you become utterly exhausted. the physical addiction is quite daunting.

so, i should just sleep it off, right?

sure. i tried that. like, 50 times. unfortunately, i had to go to school, or go to work, or write an essay, or study for an exam. i had to stay awake. so, i lit up a smoke, and it worked. that's why it took so long.

eventually, i had to sleep it off for a month and then i was quit. 

after 2015, until my social life died in the pandemic, i was able to go back to smoking at parties, which is what i wanted the whole time but just couldn't force myself into from 2002-2015. i found the key was to have respect for the possibility of addiction and make sure i was only smoking at parties, never cheating, never sneaking. i could handle that, and i did. i found that the nicotine had a more powerful effect once the tolerance wore down to nothing, as well. the nicotine began working as a stimulant, again. that was why i smoked in the first place, so i wanted to maintain that by not abusing it, and it worked. i realized the need to have that smoke at 6:30 am, coming out of an all night underground party in detroit, before i got on my bicycle back to canada. it woke me right up, and made sure i didn't pass out in hamtramck, or at the russell, or in the art park, or something.

but i've been essentially cold turkey since early 2020, when they shut down the bars. others reacted almost oppositely but, for me, the end of the bars meant the end of smoking, because i had quit smoking at home in 2015 and i had every intention of sticking to it.

https://www.cbc.ca/life/culture/smoking-pop-culture-comeback-risks-9.7035616

they will try to tell you the easter bunny was invented during the reformation.

liars.

https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/ancient-roots-of-easter-bunny/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346357286_The_Shifting_Baselines_of_the_British_Hare_Goddess

this is important because it's our shared cultural history, from the tip of ireland to the ganges river, and from the arctic ocean to the mediterranean sea. but we've all been colonized, and we've been tricked for centuries into fighting stupid wars with each other.

if we could get rid of the semitic colonization - judaism, christianity, islam and mormonism - and assert a common indo-european identity, we could build a unified post-colonial cultural identity across europe and asia built on indigenous indo-european cultural values of respecting and co-existing with nature, rather than the semitic idea of controlling and dominating over it. and we need to do that.

easter is stupid. sure. but, take the time to try to transcend your colonial conditioning and reconnect with your indigenous origins. we're not going to save the world holding to this semitic colonial society, or continuing to be brainwashed by their tools of religious domination. it's a pre-requisite to breaking free.

it looks trivial. it's not.

the christian apologists will lie to you in telling you that egg decorating was invented in the victorian era and is a capitalist neo-pagan idea that corrupts the real christian easter. and, you'll shrug it off because you don't know any better. i'm not going to yell at you and call you ignorant about this, because who fucking cares. i agree. it's obvious that it's not exactly a passover tradition, so why not believe it was invented by hallmark and coca-cola?

but it's not true.

for your general reference...

egg painting is an ancient indo-european practice. actually. like the goddess of the dawn, ostara, it shows up all over the place in indo-european religons. for example, it's a key tradition in the zoroastran nowruz festival, which has roots in the indo-aryan period. spring equinox egg painting was certainly normal in ancient persia, before anything - before christianity, before reformed judaism, before the jews even returned after the captivity. this is amongst the oldest traditions in the world. it wasn't invented by american capital.

it shows up in baltic and slavic pagan traditions. prominently.

and there's really every reason to think the ancient germans, including the ancient angles and saxons, had some egg-painting practice, even if the christians made sure to destroy any record of it.

this information is easily googleable.

don't believe the christians. they're the fucking worst.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_decorating

the government's decision to drag it's feet in implementing this important court decision, which upholds the inalienable right of a sovereign individual to commit suicide, must be reversed.

if the government does not want to implement the court order, it should use the notwithstanding clause and put the issue in the political arena. i, for one, would consider the right to self-ownership to be a ballot question and explicitly vote in favour of the right to kill yourself.

this decision must belong to the individual and not to the state and certainly not to some fucking religious shithead.

https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/ad-am/bk-di.html

there's a lot of nonsense about "greater israel" on the internet.

that's not the nonsense that israeli war planners are directed by.

israeli war planners are actually directed by the nonsense of bronze age mythology.

this is the correct nonsense:

https://biblearchaeology.org/research/divided-kingdom/4180-the-biblical-cities-of-tyre-and-sidon

my understanding is that if you're trying to draw the map of the middle east out of the back of a bible, the south of lebanon is a part of the holy land, and therefore a proper part of israel.

however, beirut and damascus are both outside of the holy land and therefore both not kosher in this analysis.

yeah, this is disgusting.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/ottawa-bay-du-nord-9.7115558

don coyote doesn't like windmills.

total is power corp, desmerais. this company is very powerful in canada. it's eyebrow raising.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-administration-totalenergies-offshore-wind-9.7139677

i would vote to abolish catholic schools in ontario.

https://globalnews.ca/news/11742410/ford-government-board-changes-coming/

this is ridiculous and should be entirely cancelled.

all new immigrants to canada should be assessed strictly on an individual basis. whether an applicant does or does not have family in canada should be considered 100% irrelevant in determining immigration status. the income of an existing citizen should have absolutely no relevance on the admission of their parent or grandparent, who should be analyzed individually, and strictly on their own qualifications. 

being wealthy should not give you a waiver to import your family into the country. that's essentially buying citizenship for your family members. in feudal europe, it would have been called nepotism. it's absurd.

citizenship is to be determined by rules set by parliament, not bought and sold on the free market.

nor should you gain citizenship via marriage, or automatically be allowed to bring a spouse in to the country. you and your spouse should be assessed as individuals and admitted or rejected individually. all children of applicants over the age of 18 should be assessed individually and rejected or admitted individually, as well. children between the age of 12-18 should have a less stringent set of requirements and potentially be rejected individually in extreme cases.

this law is feudal in character and should be completely abolished.

we need to get back to a strict application of the points system, with no exceptions or workarounds. if you don't qualify, too fucking bad.

https://www.cicnews.com/2026/03/canada-eases-income-requirement-for-hosting-parents-and-grandparents-on-super-visa-0373315.html

the selfishness, self-centredness and entitlement on display at the supreme court today is revolting.

the arguments presented in court today by an array of religionist groups merely demonstrate why the society seeks to exclude them and doesn't want them corrupting their youth.

what a bunch of assholes.

one of these religious groups hit it on the head.

“Bill 21 states that there exists something fundamentally wrong and harmful with religious practices, some of them in particular, from which we must protect the public,” argued Olga Redko, lawyer for Ichrak Nourel Hak and other Muslim teachers in the province.

"The message that they've received is that they're not worthy of participating in provincial institutions because their expression of faith is contrary to Quebec's values," she said.   

there you go. you got it. exactly. you understand perfectly well.

that is the opinion of the overwhelming majority of quebeckers.

and.....you don't care. you want to try to force your values on their kids anyways.

you selfish piece of shit. go fuck yourself.

every single one of these arguments is irrelevant, ridiculous and vexatious. most of these groups should be declared vexatious litigants, as their arguments have no place in a secular court.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/livestory/bill-21-supreme-court-9.7138285

i've told you why i support bill 21. what do i think about the constitutional challenge?

it doesn't stand a chance. the court might rule the law is unconstitutional, but it has no jurisdiction to unilaterally amend the charter. there is a process to amend the charter, and an appeal to the supreme court is not it.

the appeal is a performative act by the federal government. it knows it has no chance of success. in fact, if it thought the appeal had a chance of success, i think it's extremely unlikely that it would risk the wrath of quebecois voters in launching it. the liberals, at both the provincial and federal level, have actually supported very similar legislation.

so, the whole thing is a political stunt by ottawa. it has no chance of success. the supreme court should probably even declare some of the groups arguing against the law to be vexatious litigants, as their arguments have no legal basis and are absurd and a waste of time. while the court cannot declare the federal government vexatious, the appeal is clearly vexatious to the letter of the term, in every conceivable way. it's not a serious legal argument, it's a time wasting and performative political exercise.

the supreme court has a lot of power, but it cannot amend the constitution. that's it. case closed. go home.

the purpose of the notwithstanding clause was supposed to be the opposite of this. a right-wing government in alberta led by peter lougheed was afraid that ottawa might do something like pass a law banning abortion (in canada, our roe v wade is called morgantaler and didn't happen until 1988 and could not have happened without the constitution, as ratified in 1982) and wanted a trump card. the justice minister at the time, jean chretien, did not support this position. nor did mr chretien support the inclusion of property rights, religious rights or religious language in the constitution, which was what lougheed concerned about, exactly. what if this crazy guy chretien became prime minister one day?

pierre trudeau famously kicked chretien in the shins in response, and we have a notwithstanding clause, notwithstanding chretien's opposition to it.

if the court really doesn't like bill 21 in the end, something i'm not convinced will be the case, it has the option to state as much. it would then need to do something called balancing, using a process called an oakes test. the oakes test asks if the law is a justifiable rights restriction, even if it's unconstitutional. this is not the united states.

so, the court needs to ask:

- is the law unconstitutional? 

- is the law consistent with the quebec constitution?

- if the law is unconstitutional, is it a justified rights restriction?

- if the law is not a justified rights restriction, does the court have jurisdiction to overturn it?

the government might get the answer it wants on every question except the last one. i don't think that's going to be the case, but it might be.

a possible outcome is therefore the supreme court releasing a scathing analysis, but finding it has no jurisdiction to overturn the law.

i think that a more likely outcome is that the court's majority will conclude that the law is consistent with quebec's charter, and decide that that is more important. this might, in theory, be a law that can only exist in quebec, the notwithstanding clause notwithstanding. that would clarify how provincial governments in the rest of the country need to act if they want to emulate the law in their own provinces.

i live in windsor, on which is sardonically called south detroit. i've been to hamtramck quite frequently, which was a small polish community in metro detroit before it got swarmed by muslim immigrants. hamtramck was at one point the live music capital of detroit because the rent was cheap and it had it's own little downtown. 

the muslim immigrants took over the city hall and tried to ban the gays and the music. the non-muslim residents of the city are extremely liberal and actually helped to get them elected, only to have the knife stabbed in their back. they never supported liberal anything. they're the most conservative group in the country, and in the world. it's created a nightmare, in which a segment of detroit has been forced to fight for it's survival against an immigrant community trying to wipe them out.

the only reason that hasn't happened in toronto is due to amalgamation. if toronto had not amalgamated, there would be a hamtramck in the gta by now.

but you can look at the school council in toronto to get the point.

compare the public schools in toronto to montreal and you'll understand why quebec passed bill 21 and why it's necessary to implement it. due to bill 21, montreal will survive. toronto is on the path to being the next detroit.

it would seem like kushner is talking with the shah, who is the "respected iranian leader" trump is talking about.

i don't support putting the shah back in power, but this was predictable enough. if trump can't get a good stooge in the regime, he'll parachute one in.

my solidarity remains with the resistance groups on the ground, and the same logic about timelines applies to them. iran is done. now, it's a race against time as to who can get in there first.

- the chinese, with lingering regime support

- the iranian resistance, which is lead by the kurds, with israeli tactical support

- the americans, via the shah, and likely with arab troops and a small american marine force

that's what is developing.

all.

set.

go!

i don't have the burrow lines, so i don't think it's rat scabies.

the least wrong answer seems to be that these damned rats, which seem to be dead, tracked in some fleas, and i'll have to figure that out. ugh.

it's a nice apartment for cheap. this is why it's cheap. but i'm smart. i'll figure this out.

i may have to get tested to figure out what's biting me. i have removed two dead rats and i have some kind of itchy rash. i don't know if it's fleas, mites or rat scabies but i don't think it's all just ingrowns.

i don't have my kit set up yet, man. fuck off. stop biting me.

the only insect in here that i've been able to actually find and observe and see are black ants. i have tried to block up some holes but it seems a little much for ant bites.

i dunno.

it looks like a contradiction, but in fact i pointed out the same thing in ukraine, when things looked like they were on autopilot. they were. and they are now.

people imagine that war is random and crazy because it's seen as irrational and stupid. war is what happens when hot-headed yosemite sams can't get the damned rabbit using their faculties of reason and resort to the stupidity of violence out of desperation. right? wrong.

in the modern world, people get paid to plan wars out years ahead of time and when they happen they're predetermined and, by extension, virtually impossible to stop. there was almost nothing that the russians could have done to stop ukraine from happening, in 2014. a deep state contingency plan kicked in. post-kgb forces started operating independently of centralized authority. if putin claimed he had no idea, he was probably being honest.

so, who is making decisions in iran?

the answer is that they were already made before this happened, and what's unfolding was pre-determined, pre-scripted. we're left to wait for the program to finish and for the ammunition to run out. there are no negotiations possible because there's nobody to negotiate with, in addition to the system being structurally and inherently irrational by design. there's nobody to push stop. there's a system running without a control mechanism.

the iranians are dead. we just have to let them die in front of us, and it might be painful. i don't know what's been programmed or how long the show lasts.

the americans and the world should be trying to figure out what the chinese are doing.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn53zvlglg7o

so, what the fuck?

 "I AM PLEASE TO REPORT THAT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE COUNTRY OF IRAN, HAVE HAD, OVER THE LAST TWO DAYS, VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST.

"BASED ON THE TENOR AND TONE OF THESE IN DEPTH, DETAILED, AND CONSTRUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS, WITCH WILL CONTINUE THROUGHOUT THE WEEK, I HAVE INSTRUCTED THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR TO POSTPONE ANY AND ALL MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST IRANIAN POWER PLANTS AND ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A FIVE DAY PERIOD, SUBJECT TO THE SUCCESS OF THE ONGOING MEETINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP"

don coyote is absolutely certain that he's a master negotiator, and his brilliant tactic of bullying irrational actors into submission will be overwhelmingly successful, so he's going to give the utterly insane iranians another chance to get their heads out of their asses before he pounds the shit out of them, which he clearly had no intent to do, because the iranians were supposed to be good little mullahs, once trump got them shaking for their lives in their turbans.

right.

five days?

who is taking bets on the likelihood of china taking over the strait in the next five days? i'll put $50 on yalu, jim.

we've got five days. that's all we've got. five days.

my brain hurts.

a lot.

i just pulled out rat #2 and this one was poisoned and already dead when i found it.

it looks like the bleach worked.

they knocked it over a few times and tracked through it. that might have been enough to get it.

a big part of bill 21 is to send the message to religious people that most parents don't want them around their kids. like, at all. and, that's entirely valid.

at the end of the day, we're all fucking monkeys living in extended clan groups, and this is how primate society works - we expel the ones we don't like.

it's better than submitting to the biggest ape with the biggest club.

and you should remember that the latter is, in the end, what all the religious monkeys actually want.

a lot of fucking hippies are going to bitch and complain that laws like bill 21, or the much stronger french laws, "exclude" people.

but, that's the point. 

excluding people because you reject their values and beliefs is the most fundamental characteristic of democracy and any system that takes that away is a body blow to the concept of democratic freedom. freedom of association is more important than freedom of speech, as free speech requires freedom of association as a pre-requisite to be workable. it is utterly imperative that the secular majority, where it exists, is able to exclude the religious from participating in society, as a statement of principles and values. rejecting that is synonymous with rejecting democracy.

but we know that that's the point and that that's what these counter-arguments are about. these people don't give the slightest fuck about democracy. they think they're special. in fact, they think they're superior. they think they deserve special rules because they're superior, and that their beliefs are not subject to criticism because they're better than you, and they'll even try to silence you if you try to criticize them. well, look at what they actually believe, and process how stupid it is, and then try to get your head around the delusional thinking underlying that. then, they wonder why they're being excluded, and complain it's not fair.

sociologists would describe laws like this an informal means of social control. the ostracism is intended to send the message that they're being excluded because their beliefs are not acceptable. that's the point. that's the intention. if you realize it, you understand. they need to get the point and adjust, not sit on their thumbs and bitch and whine about it.

to me the issue isn't about politicians, it's about public servants, including teachers and doctors. while i'm not particularly upset about a ban like this, and get it, i would also argue that the restrictions on political symbols at work don't really apply to politicians because they aren't providing services, or not exactly. it's subtle. a political staffer that provides services to a population in a riding should not be able to display political or religious symbols while doing so, but for the politician itself, it's somewhat irrelevant. kind of. broadly, but not really.

i would not vote for a politician that displays religious symbols and would choose not to associate with them if they win. that's largely enough, as i probably don't need to interact with them directly, and they aren't exactly public servants.

but the keffiyah ban should logically be extended to hijabs and other religious symbols, so long as it exists, and even if i don't think the legislature is a valid area of regulation, in this respect. i'm more concerned about keeping politics and religion out of schools, hospitals and places where services are received, like service ontario.

it's kind of a step in the right direction, though, even if it misses the point.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-legislative-assembly-bans-keffiyehs-1.7176965

i don't give a fuck about "multiculturalism". i'm interested in post-culturalism.

multiculturalism is just a trojan horse for the religious right.

i understand that a lot of people insist a religious symbol is something different than a political slogan, and will get offended by the suggestion. but i don't give a fuck if they're offended.

nobody is able to explain why a religious symbol is something different than a political slogan and, in the process, they consistently concede, explicitly or not, that it isn't something different than a political slogan at all.

in ontario, i think a ban on religious symbols at work would fall under the scope of the following legislation:

https://www.oico.on.ca/en/public-sector-ethics-political-activity

key to this is the idea that a religion is the same thing as a political party, in a truly secular state. arguing otherwise is the part of the debate i have difficulty understanding; i don't understand how somebody can tell me a religion is something different than an opinion, and still think we live in a democracy. if you're going to look at me with a straight face and tell me religious beliefs have some special sanctified place and are different than any other opinion, you are legislating faith above the law, and don't believe in equality or democracy. if religious belief is the same as any other opinion, than a religion is nothing more or less than a political party, and it should be taxed like a political party and have restrictions on donations to it that are the same as donating to a political party. further, any activity in support of that religion or political party would be banned at work, including symbols associated with the religion / political party.

the united states has a similar law called the hatch act, and there is some case law supporting the same position at the federal level in canada, but i don't want to look it up right now.

quebec's bill 21 is important in canada's constitutional rights framework because it ensures that the non-religious, who are the vast majority of canadians, have the right to exist in true freedom from any kind of religious coercion and are not being forced by state dictate to interact with people they would otherwise choose not to associate with. i don't want to have to tolerate religious people, i have no legal or moral obligation to tolerate them and i expect the legal and constitutional framework of the country i live in to uphold my right to not be forced to tolerate them.

i would like to see bill 21 enacted federally and applied to the federal work force, as well as encted provincially and applied to the province of ontario.

i do think that the government of quebec made a mistake in enacting the notwithstanding clause as it frames the question in the wrong terms. there are already strong restrictions on political activity in the public service, and there is no discernible difference between a political party and a religion in a secular society. they really didn't need a new law to ban religious symbols in the workplace, as it falls under the prohibition on political activity.

as an atheist, i feel extremely uncomfortable interacting with religious people in any way at all, for any reason, and insist i have the right to receive services by people that do not believe in any kind of god, at all times. this is about my rights to live free of religious coercion, which are important. the supposed, so-called right to believe in imaginary nonsense is not important, it's utterly retarded, and the idea should be done away with entirely in any advanced, modern, secular, enlightened society looking to the future instead of the past.

robert mueller was an asshole.

i agree with that.

while i don't think that civilian energy infrastructure is a valid target and therefore oppose trump's ultimatum, iran's delusional response merely demonstrates the point.

if the americans wanted to control the strait, they should have had that as an immediate objective and the fact that they didn't is a failure at central command. trump approves the strikes, but he doesn't write the contingency plans. i'm sure the contingency plan exists - 100% sure. somebody failed to put it in motion.

it's really little more than a minor annoyance. the americans will easily take control of the strait once they get the process in motion.

however, i have been clear that i think the americans should be blockading the iranians. my best guess as to why they aren't is that they don't want to upset the chinese, which is just another layer of nonsense in the americans' thinking. who do they think just launched a missile at diego garcia? 

the houthis? 

the taliban?

i mean, c'mon.

if the americans towed away a few tankers worth of iranian oil intended for the chinese market to it's strategic reserve, that would be a long-deserved kick in the teeth. truly.

in the end, these outcomes are't mutually exclusive. the americans can take control of the straits and blockade iranian oil exports. but they don't appear to be interested in the latter. in fact, that waiver for iranian oil is to replace kuwaiti or gulf oil. the americans are actually functionally encouraging the iranians to eat into the market controlled by their gulf allies, who they are bombing on behalf of. it's all absurd.

right now, it's a matter of time before they take control, and the media's analysis and suggestions otherwise are idiotic. it's a mixture of anti-semitism, anti-americanism and rank morally righteous conservatism. 

i find myself with odd allies today, but i'm driven by ideas and not by allegiances, and i call them as i see them. there's a right-wing, conservative giddiness setting in at the idea of decadent america losing to the religious extremist islamists. it's absurd wishful thinking, but it lets us know what these people are thinking about when they're wishing. it's a longstanding problem in the west; the secularism is in many ways a thin veneer that hides a longing for a return to complete backwardsness.

the sooner that trump stops pretending he can negotiate with these psychotic lunatics, the faster the americans are able to get in there and take over. if he continues to delude himself and delay the inevitable, he runs the risk of looking weak and stupid, as he eventually goes in with a whimper rather than a bang. and if he waits long enough, he might find the chinese beat him to it.

i've been trying to figure out what the hell's been biting me and there's no evidence besides the bites.

there were some spiders in here, but they've been gone for a while. i've seen no signs of roaches since i moved in. i have looked thoroughly for bed bugs and there's nothing. further, the bites don't look like bed bug bites to me, and are mostly on my lower body.

i'm tentatively concluding i'm being bitten by rat fleas, but i haven't seen one. it seems like the least wrong answer.

i have no potential exposure to scabies or anything like that.

this morning, as i've been waiting for the temperature to come up, i took a closer look and realized that all of the bites have a commonality - there's an ingrown hair in every single one. so, are they just ingrowns? it seems unimaginable.

i really want the summer to come in asap and the junkies upstairs to leave asap so i can clean up in here and rule out potential causes.

i'm told the junkies will be forcibly removed by the sheriff on april 5thish. the eviction date is april 1st. i have called the sheriff, and they cannot confirm that.

i'm making a tactical decision to completely lock myself inside until may to be sure that they're completely gone and i don't have any interaction with them as they're being removed. there may be some physical altercations, as there's a lot of people in the back yard and in the garage. there's going to be desperate people trying to get in places and drug addicts trying to get something to sell for dope. i don't want them to even know i'm here at all, and they might not. the windows are shuttered or boarded up. one or two of them know i'm here but i think most of the junkies think the basement is currently empty.

if somebody tries to smash in here, i'll have to smash their head in like i smashed the rat's head in. but i don't want to give them access points or ideas. i want to stay quiet and wait until they're out of here, and then give it a few weeks to be sure they're gone.

the issue i'm primarily concerned about is theft. junkies just steal everything. you can't trust them and you're stupid to try to.

i have made it a point of principle to completely avoid interacting with them. when they talk to me, i ignore them. i hope the message is clear enough that i'm not their friend and don't want to help them.

once they're gone, i'll be able to finish setting this place up.

i do think the rats are gone. the reality is that they'd rather be outside. but we'll see.

donald trump is 80 years old. he's the stubbornest, grumpiest, dickiest old man at the geriatric facility. he doesn't learn new things. he's set in his ways.

these are poor characteristics for a president, but the united states has become a gerontocracy, and we'll all have to navigate that. his replacement will be old, and their replacement will be old. trying to run a young person is just going to be unsuccessful, until the boomers die, at the least.

the democrats should run bernie sanders because he's old. it will increase his chances, because the voters are old, and they want old. that, and the young people are a bunch of shitheads themselves, but that's not even the issue, as of yet.

so, don coyote wants to negotiate. he wants to be a bully. then he wants to make a deal.

he wants to give iran an offer it can't refuse.

ok. i don't agree. but ok.

threatening to bomb the power plants is dumb. they don't give a fuck about that. that is just going to maximize misery.

if donald trump wants to be a bully and create leverage to make a deal tell him to threaten to bunker bomb the presidential palaces. tell him to blow up the governing infrastructure - the halls, the meeting places, the eating houses, the hotels of the rich and the powerful.

i think they probably still won't listen.

but they might. and if they don't, let the hell rain down on the decision makers, not the people.

the sun is not always this important in the weather. it's often not and it's effect is lower closer to the equator, and in the summer, which might be confusing.

but the forecasts are specifically getting the solar weather wrong in the northern hemisphere in spring after and during flares.

that radiation will dissipate, but it has a strong short term effect and the models just aren't getting it.

saturday was the opposite of friday. on friday, it was sunny, so the forecast (17) was less than the high (23). on saturday, it was cloudy, and it never hit the forecasted high of 11, but instead only got to 6.

they were off by five degrees on both days and, on both days, they were wrong because they didn't correctly calculate the sun.

sunday is going to be humid and cloudy. that's trickier. but i've been waiting all day for it to warm up to take a shower and it just didn't because the sun never came out.

no, this is idiotic. power generation is not a valid military target in a war like this and the iranian state does not care about the well-being of its own citizens. this is just helping the irgc oppress the population.

it is completely predictable that the iranian state will say "let them blow up the power plants, then. our regime officials will have power at the expense of the basic needs of the people, who will be more reliant on us and less likely to revolt.".

for that reason, it's obvious this won't work and trump doesn't appear to get it: you cannot negotiate with the faithful. he is continuing to dangle carrots and continuing to try to make a deal, and he's running out of time, with his fucking around. all he's doing is giving the chinese an opportunity to move in. 

the insistence on trying to negotiate is very, very stupid.

the liquidation of the iranian state was the right thing to do, but the americans need a better decision maker as commander-in-chief. they're fucking this up.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/trump-threatens-to-obliterate-irans-power-plants-if-strait-of-hormuz-not-opened-in-48-hours/

the united states should not be trying to sell any oil it captures, it should be stockpiling it in it's strategic petroleum reserves.

this is utterly absurd.

https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2026/03/21/funding-the-enemy-trump-rolls-back-sanctions-on-iran-without-any-guardrails/

the russians are of absolutely no threat to us whatsoever and a foreign policy rooted on seeing russia as a threat is a mistake, and potentially a catastrophic one.

canada's biggest threat is religious extremism, and particularly the threat of islam. 

if we don't adjust to prepare to meet our actual threats, rather than fight imaginary ghosts, we will find ourselves struggling when they actualize, and we aren't ready for them.

should we rely on france for deterrence?

somebody needs a history lesson.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/nuclear-france-us-trump-greenland-9.7136790

this is why nato enlargement to any slavic-speaking country, with the exceptions of bohemia/czechia and slovenia, which is basically italy, is a mistake.

the slavs will eventually realign with moscow, leaving western europe with a giant bill and the us with a pile of forfeited technology. 

if the americans are smart, they will get as much technology out of poland as they can now, before it's too late.

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/03/19/fact-check-is-polexit-really-on-the-cards-for-poland?dicbo=v2-MPbxei2

that would suggest the chinese likely moved something in. i warned them that would happen if they fucked around, trying to negotiate.

rome and berlin are both less than 4000 km from tehran. paris and london would be further.

and, yes, it is the chinese that would target this base, as it would be a chinese military objective.

https://www.euronews.com/2026/03/21/iranian-attack-on-the-diego-garcia-military-base-its-location-and-strategic-role

i've never heard of a country increasing trade access to a country they're at war with.

it's an irrational, unserious policy.

i supported dismantling the fascist iranian state with extreme violence. as it is, these are the worst free trade negotiations of all time.

do you want to buy canadian carbon?

assholery.

the international position that canada is taking is to be the biggest fucking asshole possible, and to revel in it, and smear it in everybody's faces, and then get confused when people reject us for it, which is coming.

canada has consistently behaved like a giant asshole, internationally, since trudeau was elected, as we fight a stupid and unjust war to prevent independence in eastern "ukraine" and refuse to engage in a just war against islamist extremists that want to wipe us out and destroy our culture.

canada has become the giant asshole of the world.

worse, canada completely lacks any sort of self-awareness as to it's utter and absolutely depraved assholery.

if we collapse, we deserve it.

it doesn't make sense to get into a protracted struggle over the oil refineries in iran, particularly kharg island. that's the kind of fucking around i warned against. they are not carrying out the total war against the iranian state that was required to make this worthwhile and effective, but are instead trying to capture resources to use in negotiations against an opponent that is irrational and cannot be negotiated with.

i support bringing marines and other troops into the area, but i want to see a blockade of iran, not an attempt to open shipping. there should be an arab occupation of the north of the persian gulf, with the attempt to annex the arab and baluchi majority regions from iran.

the decision to abandon iraq makes canada and other nato countries look opportunistic and selfish. we're demonstrating ourselves as poor allies and bad friends.

we've had several 20+ or nearly 20 degree days in windsor this year, and none of them have been forecast. it hit 23 today. the forecast was 17.

but now it's 5.

it's march, and this back and forth happens in march, but what i'm getting at is the forecast and not the weather itself. whatever is causing the weather, the forecasts should be able to get it within 12-24 hours at worst, if the models are nearly complete. they're not getting it because they're not complete. i've alluded to a missing factor. i've also alluded to the models over-shooting enso and under-shooting the atlantic.

there's apparently a scary amount of hot air off the coast of arizona right now creating a ridge over north america.

however, the totality of these observations at this time of the year is more consistent with a series of ssws, and i'll draw your attention to the strong aurora borealis happening right now.

the weather is complicated. there's lots of things happening, and they cancel each other out. it's not trivial to account for everything and get it right.

but the forecasts are consistently getting it wrong in exactly the same way over and over and it's resulting in a constant ~5 degree cooling error. that is, the forecasts are constantly for highs that are five degree less than the observed temperatures. this constant error factor is a mistake in how to work the effects of the solar maximum into the models, due to not understanding the effects of the increase in solar radiation, and the ssw events it causes.

there's a few changes in the gdp ranking to take note of.

look at this:

india is now at #4, pushing japan to #5. japan, for a long time, was at #3, and germany was at #4, with the uk and france holding detente at 5 and 6.

russia has leapfrogged both canada and brazil to enter the top ten. maybe canada should announce some more sanctions on russia. this is pushing canada that much closer to mexico, who continues to have a much higher growth rate.

can the russians catch italy to enter the g6?

spain and south korea have switched spots. oddly. that's a big jump for spain and a steep decline for the koreans.

turkey and indonesia have switched spots, which must have to do with shifts in global preferences for silly hats.

and it would appear that dutch hashish has finally overtaken the saudi product, giving them the edge after many years.

look, here comes tchitcherine, right now, with an oversized shepherd's hook to take don coyote and keir starmer off the stage, together.

the americans should want some european help.....to enforce a blockade of iran. it's silly to suggest otherwise.

...but only the british really have a navy worth seriously deploying for this task. 

i need to reiterate the importance of using arab troops, as this is their war. but the british have a navy, and the navy is already there. they are sending something after all, apparently. but washington is right to have ruffled feathers over this and those backroom deal makers in london should be thinking this through.

starmer's days may very well be numbered. it would be a last straw rather than a direct cause, but he's probably done.

you? never did!

the kenosha kid

(donald trump, explaining his newfound disinterest in nato help around the strait of hormuz)

christan apologists are bald-faced liars. they've been lying for centuries. don't believe what they say.

there is a semitic deity, ishtar/astarte, that seems to have some relationship with the indo-european goddess of the dawn through a linguistic borrowing but not through direct comparative mythology. there are some claims that easter is a corruption of astarte. i'm not willing to discard the idea, a priori, as many are. the idea is less absurd on it's face than many may claim, as we know that there were all kinds of mystery cults in the roman empire. while easter does not seem to derive from astarte, jesus does seem to derive from isis.

it actually seems to be the other way around. the semitic sumerian name for the goddess ishtar actually seems to be inanna, which is an etymology that is very different and actually comes from a semitic sumerian word/root. astarte/ishtar appears to be an indo-european word borrowed by the semites to describe a semitic sumerian, rather than indo-european, deity. it might have origins during one of the early indo-european occupations of mesopotamia, and there were several before cyrus, some quite ancient.

so, easter is not derived from ishtar, but ishtar appears to be derived from the same word as easter.

the celtic version has a different etymology, which does have a different vedic analogue.

the baltic version is called ausrine or austra.

the vedic version is usas:

all of these are better attested than eoster, but they are all the same word, and thus all the same god.

because we have no historical record of indigenous german religion besides the language, which we can trace back to pie roots, it doesn't matter what the source of the stories about eostre are. the christians destroyed everything. we are left with the need for poetic license.

the idea left behind is clear enough.

what we know from the linguistics, which are indisputable, is that the german eostre was the same god as the greek eos, the roman aurora, the vedic usas, the lithuanian ausrine, etc. this god exists in all of the indo-european pantheons, including the german, as eoster, which we retain as easter. there is some direct evidence of this in the form of linguistically similar mother goddess worship in spain, france and germany, but the evidence is weak and indirect and not very important.

it is more useful to try to reconstruct eostre from the greek, roman, vedic and slavic traditions than to try to find it in the pre-roman destruction horizon. the roman/christian genocide of the celtic and germanic peoples was pretty thorough.

this is a video about eos. it doesn't directly mention eostre, but the linguistic pie reconstruction is neither controversial nor disputable.

this is where the word comes from.

this is a video on aurora, which is the roman version of the same god:

unlike any religious rite or ritual, the spring solstice is worth celebrating, however you celebrate it.

i'm still stuck inside for a few more weeks, myself. unfortunately.

the element of supplies.

i actually think it's exceedingly important that neither the japanese nor the americans forget about pearl harbour.

while i'm still holding out for that secret ninja strike force, i don't think anybody expected the japanese to be involved in iran. it's worth remembering that the primary reason they occupied most of east asia was for the oil and the rubber. that was what that was actually about.

he probably should have called the brits because they're still there. nobody else was really very relevant.

but the japanese need this every now and again, and it's important they're reminded about it. they can't be allowed to live this down.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/19/trump-mocks-japan-pearl-harbor-iran-war

it's starting to look like israel is moving into the region south of the litani river to stay.

as mentioned, the region has been mostly inhabited by shi'te colonists from syria for some time now, who have driven out the indigenous christian groups and invited hezbollah in to set up institutions. the lebanese government has been unable to prevent this.

it's hard to oppose the idea on it's face. israel should be rewarded with an increase in territory for the hardships it endured after oct 7, and the lack of support it received from the surrounding countries. the israelis are morally justified in expanding territory into lebanon, syria and gaza itself (if it really wants) on these grounds. and lebanon is both unable and unwilling to govern this area south of the river.

there needs to be consequences for failing to prevent terrorism from existing on your territory.

it's a reasonable outcome.

the trudeau government ruined the country by systematically failing at everything.

the cost of living is through the roof and the quality of life is in the toilet. so, the media wants to ban facebook instead of address the objective economic indicators. typical.

it's the allegory of the cave in modern terms - if you just take away the internet, how will canadians know their lives suck? they won't. they'll just trudge their way through the emptiness of consumer capitalism without ever knowing there's any better ideas out there.

https://vancouversun.com/news/world-happiness-rankings-canada-social-media

canada is willing to copy whatever everybody else does.

baaaaaaaa.

baaaaaaaaa.

baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/canada-joint-statement-strait-hormuz-9.7135150

this is an utterly absurd waste of money. they're going to spend millions handing out tickets that never get paid and tie up court resources on unpaid fines, when they should just give them clean needles and tell them to go commit suicide by themselves.

i've never seen a society waste such a stupid amount of resources as canada does on worthless junkies. our police, our judges and our money all have better things to do than waste their time chasing around losers.

https://globalnews.ca/news/11736600/ontario-drug-use-new-provincial-offence/

the president has been clear that the purpose of the shift to import taxes is to eliminate income taxes.

it's not about any of this. this is all irrelevant.

we have no leverage and no say because it doesn't matter. this is an intentional tax hike.

canada should not walk into this with a false narrative about jobs or competitiveness. these negotiations have nothing to do with that. these negotiations are about the president looking for ways to replace revenue from income taxes, using the 19th century as a model.

as the president is trying to raise revenue, he doesn't want jobs to move south, as that would defeat the point. he wants americans to pay the import taxes so he can reduce income taxes.

it really has little to do with us. so, we shouldn't make rash decisions or foolish concessions. if the americans want to tax their own people, that's up to them. we should neither react nor follow suit, we should continue to have progressive income taxes and low import taxes.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-tariffs-canada-trade-negotiation-cusma-usmca-9.7132301

see, this is what i wanted to see in the fucking first place.

i hope it's effective.

the americans need to do this to remind people who the boss is. we can't have these iranian shitheads thinking they can do what they want.

https://gulfnews.com/world/mena/battle-for-hormuz-us-drops-5000-pound-bunker-busters-on-iranian-missile-sites-france-uk-mine-hunting-drones-poised-to-help-clear-strait-1.500478177

what do i think about these dog talking button boards?

some of the dogs seem to be using it in ways that are very curious and convincing.

most of what i'm seeing, however, is something more along the lines of a dog pushing the button and waiting for attention. we think we're doing a study on the dog. but the dog seems to be doing a study on us. what does the human do if i press this button? how about this button? most of the time, the dog will push the button and wait for a reaction, which tells me it's the one doing the experiment on us.

however, i've also seen some videos where the dogs are really acting independently with clarity and decisiveness. the videos where the dog pushes the button and then takes an action are more convincing than the ones where the dog pushes the button and waits for a reaction. for example, i saw a video where a dog pressed "bedtime" and then got up and independently went to bed, without waiting for any reaction from the human. that dog was apparently putting itself to bed, like a little kid, because the human forgot to do it.

i don't have difficulty accepting the idea. dogs understand commands. that's unambiguous. dogs are also constantly struggling to communicate. so, whether specific dogs are able to get it or not is something i want to see the evidence for. i'm willing to believe it, if you can prove it to me.

right now, it's still ambiguous, and i'm skeptical that most dogs are able to really crack the code. based on what i've seen, only a select collection of dogs are going to be smart enough to really get it, some small percent, and the rest are just pushing your buttons to get you to react to them. further, how well a dog is trained (in general) is likely relevant in their ability to understand the buttons.

if i was going to actually get a pet, i'd get a retriever, not a rat.

guess what goldie would bring me?

but i don't want a dog.

i do think they're gone. the one i got this morning was the problematic mother fucker running around all over the place, i think. i'm sure there's at least one, probably two, and maybe more, dead ones under the upstairs sink, which i poisoned via the floor in my bathroom.

but i haven't clarified where they're getting in. i think it's the backyard. i need to get out there and find the hole and patch it.

the rats were only coming down here to drop food off and use it as a burrow, and maybe to cool down a little. they were living in the upstairs kitchen and the upstairs bathroom. the property owner should pay me for doing rodent control in the adjacent property, but i'll be happy if he refunds me for the insulation i bought and fixes the fucking hole in the bathroom.

i believe that the rodents have tracked fleas into the house. there are old carpets in the laundry.

i can wash the carpets again. i already did, but that's fine. let me make sure they're gone first, but this is why coexistence isn't possible. even if i could in theory teach the rat to shit in a box and only eat what i give it, it's still filthy in ways like this. as is well known, rat fleas are particularly damaging to human health as they carry devastatingly dangerous bacteria. on some level, it would be fitting if there was a plague outbreak in southern ontario in the drug-using population, who exist in close proximity, but i obviously don't want to be at the centre of it.

i would have to get the rat flea pills, waste time training it and waste money feeding it.

i don't want any of this.

i'd rather kill it. i mean, i'd rather chase it off than kill it, but i'd rather kill it than domesticate it. i have no interest in the responsibility.

i do have a sun room in this place and i will put some plants in it. let's see if i can handle that without not giving a fuck, first.

canada has been dealing with the catastrophic effects of overpopulation for too long, already.

in order to maintain the canadian social services model, the population should be reduced to under 35 million, with an ideal point around 33 million.

the rat whimpered when i hit it with a broom. it's not like squishing an ant. but it's a filthy shit machine and it had to either leave or it had to die.

we don't have to choose narratives. rats are both intelligent mammals, and filthy vermin. both things are true.

unfortunately.

i truly hope that i don't have to do that again.

i would hope the arab countries realize the need to be more aggressive with iran, and retaliate by launching a ground invasion to hold at least part of the country.

this is good for everybody, except maybe syria. but you have to go through syria on your way from lebanon to iraq.

i'm not exactly trying to minimize the issue. it's a lot of displaced people. but the fact is that these are mostly syrians.

lebanon has sheltered an absurd number of syrian and palestinian refugees, and it looks good on the generosity of the lebanese people, but lebanon cannot absorb them. they cannot stay there.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/119000-syrians-said-to-have-returned-from-lebanon-during-israel-hezbollah-conflict/

i had to kill a rat this morning. unfortunately. 

i did everything i could to chase them out and i think most of them left. that was probably the last one, or at least the last one down here. 

i had glue traps around the water heater that were intended as a barrier, but it got stuck in one. i haven't taken a good look yet (i want to wait for the area to dry), but it looks like it got it's tail stuck in one glue trap, freaked out and then fell right into a second one, trying to escape the first. it was laying right down in the trap. 

i heard something scratching around near the door and thought something was trying to get in, but i opened the door and saw it lying right in the glue trap.

so, i could have let it die a slow death and potentially get eaten alive. instead, i broke it's back with a broom and, when i realized that didn't kill it, smashed it's head in with a hammer.

that killed it. 

so, it was sentenced to death on one count of being a rat.

i didn't want to have to do that and i hope i don't have to do it again but the rat came back. the very next day. the rat came back. see, i thought it was a goner, but the rat came back.

let this be a lesson to all you other rats around here.

but i think the rest of them are dead or gone. there's a few in the wall, i think, i'll have to open it up to get them out soon enough.

there's not much that canada can or should do in iran. canada doesn't have the technology, and to the extent that soldiers are required, the americans should expect the gulf countries themselves to provide them.

but i've been clear that canada should be sending trainers to lebanon to help assist in building an anti-terrorist force that can succeed in wiping out hezbollah. that's something we have expertise in and should be actively doing.

no more canadian soldiers in europe.

we're not your colony, any more.

and we will fight for our independence if our out of touch and clueless political class forces us to.

all that europe has ever given canada is exploitation and war. it's not a good deal for us to sign up as cannon fodder for wars that don't affect us, and most canadians do and will grasp that when reminded of it.

there are a very large number of canadians that, while insisting on maintaining political autonomy, will certainly choose the united states over europe, every time, in every way.

canadians don't want to join the eu. at all.

let europe take note that our current prime minister has personal ties to europe that are uncharacteristic of the vast majority of canadians, and that they should not expect his personal interest in europe as an individual to outlast his tenure in government, which will likely be brief.

the next canadian government will most certainly be more washington-facing, and that shift will be seen as a course correction that should be very long term and very drastic.

canada's involvement in ukraine has been a disaster and a mistake and we should be trying to get out and will be trying to get out sooner than later.

i want to repeat that: the american occupation of germany must not end anytime soon.

but eastern europe should be completely cut off from us military aid.

eastern europe is of no strategic value to the united states whatsoever and not a single penny or a single drop of blood should be expended on it.

let the russians spend the next 50 years reconquering it, if they insist. this is of no interest to the united states, and of no interest to canada.

i certainly hope that the americans, at least, stop sending money to fight an unjust and immoral war in ukraine, after this.

why should the united states continue to position missile defense systems in the baltics, for example?

the us should maintain a large occupation force in germany, and otherwise begin to withdraw from europe.

the president wants to eliminate income taxes and replace them with tariff revenues. it's a tax shift from income to consumption - highly regressive and broadly economically stupid according to most economists, but massively beneficial to the ultra-rich.

for that reason, these kinds of discussions will not be on the table. donald trump does not care about bringing back manufacturing jobs, he cares about reducing income taxes.

it is extremely unlikely that this policy will outlast donald trump. we will need to have this discussion when trump is gone, which will be soon, but which is not now.

it's consequently not clear what the purpose of mr polievre's announcement is, other than to try to confuse union voters with false promises and illusory policies.

these discussions will be necessary...with the next administration. right now, canada has to wait, and should probably avoid renegotiating nafta altogether, until a new administration comes in. this administration is not interested in trade or in jobs, it's interested in replacing income taxes with import taxes.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/windsor/article/unifor-reacts-to-conservative-auto-plan/

you know, it would be really useful if canada had a state owned gas company right now, like it used to.

it's a shame what happened with that.

it was predictable that the ndp would swing hard to the right. 

we'll see hows voters react to that.

i don't expect that this strategy will work in alberta, and may just alienate ndp voters.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/edmonton/alberta-legislature/article/albertas-smith-says-she-took-private-flight-on-behalf-of-saudi-government/

i actually think it would be helpful for the cubans to volunteer to hold elections. that's long overdue. i would support that.

i don't think that the grounds for responsibility to protect were met in venezuela.

however, they certainly were met in iran, and they certainly were met in the donbas.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/the-world-has-a-responsibility-to-protect-iranians-from-their-terrorist-regime

the assemblies were not unlawful. in principle, pro-palestinian and even anti-israeli protests are protected by free speech laws, and it doesn't matter if you're offended or think they're retards.

the problem with this particular event - and it has a history of this - is that it attracts actual nazis seeking literal acts of genocide and violence. 

it's a nazi parade. that's not hyperbolic, it's the literal truth.

canada is not the united states and our laws are not the same. we don't allow the incitement of violence against identifiable groups, because that's how fascism starts. these laws are rarely to never enforced, but this quds day bullshit is exactly what they were written to prevent.

the police need to make some arrests, here. clearly. it may only result in summary charges, but the point is to identify who these people are and ensure the police have a record of them, not to throw them in a cell.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/toronto-demonstration-antisemitic-signs

i support self-determination in novorossiya and i support democracy in iran, and i condemn my government for supporting neither thing.

i find this position to be utterly morally bankrupt, as iran's government is the most depraved in the world, and ukraine is conscripting children and marching them to their death to prevent a region that voted to secede from determining it's own future.

we've become the new nazis.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/video/2026/03/17/canada-is-making-a-choice-to-not-engage-in-iran-and-double-down-on-ukraine-reid/

see, this is what the wiley don coyote has been missing the whole time. we have don, but no ron. 

if don coyote runs for a third term, he should get ron mclean for his vp. 

i somehow think that would fix everything.

nardwuar doesn't want to break old don's hip.

he'd have to go to sweden for surgery.

i think that nardwuar should give his order of canada to don cherry in return for you know what. that's right.

....if you want to know what i think of the order of canada.

see, my position is that the fact that the americans are allowing the iranians to continue to use the strait of hormuz, and want to open it rather than blockade it, indicates the americans are not really serious and are not using the full force of military power available to them, because it's not really their intent, and never was.

i told you at the start that i supported doing this viciously and swiftly without mercy or possibility of compromise, and i didn't support trying to create leverage for negotiations or otherwise fucking around.

they actually blockaded venezuela, but they are not blockading iran.

my proposal is as follows:

(1) if the americans are serious, they will blockade the strait of hormuz and sink or capture any iranian vessel transiting it. the desire to open the strait rather than close it suggests that they aren't serious.

(2) there needs to be a ground invasion on the southern coast of iran. it should not use european soldiers, it should use arab soldiers.

(3) the punishment enacted on iran for it's behaviour should be the permanent loss of coastal territory and the loss of the area called baluchistan, which has a muslim and pakistani popuation, via annexation by the uae.

(4) the kurds should ignore washington and just seek to peel off the areas of kurdistan, luristan, gilakistan, mazandaranistan and some of the other iranian-speaking secular regions.

(5) the azeris have their own self interest and are on their own. they aren't anarchists, and they're smelly turks. i have less solidarity for them. but they will do something. what isn't clear, and i don't have that knowledge, as i'm not interested. they may want to build some kind of coalition with azerbaijan, which would be up to them. i would be more interested in protecting the armenians. connecting the two segments of azerbaijan via iran could solve some problems.. 

(6) the israelis need to step it up by focusing on serious targets. if i was picking targets, i would be trying to decapitate the iranian deep state, which includes the clerics, the judiciary and the "guardian council" and "council of experts", in addition to the irgc. wiping out executive decision makers, who are nominally elected, will have little effect if the unelected councils remain in place. it's the unelected decision makers that need to be evaporated. if this was a norse saga, the usurping king would invite everybody to a party, get them drunk and burn the house down. i don't know where they meet, but it can and should be targeted. this is what they have not done yet and will do if they are serious. if they don't do this, it won't work; the councils will just pick new executives. the councils need to be eliminated in order for this to work.

(7) what europe, and perhaps canada, should actually do is focus on training lebanese security forces to wipe out hezbollah. this is a more traditional anti-terrorist operation, and it could potentially minimize harm done in lebanon. some displacement of the non-lebanese muslim population is required in the south of lebanon, but it doesn't have to be in body bags, they can be deported.

china and europe should not send ships to open the straits. that does not help topple the government in iran, it just keeps it in place so that don coyote can make a sneaky deal for the oil.

the guardian in the uk is unfortunately identifying itself as a mouthpiece of the far right and should be appropriately censured for it. the opinions it is printing as of late are worthy of publication in a reboot of völkischer beobachter, but deeply anti-western and deeply illiberal in content and scope.

they are becoming a national embarrassment and should be deeply ashamed of themselves.

it's interesting.

https://www.reddit.com/r/lebanon/comments/1ogsfna/lebanese_christians_are_some_of_the_closest/

the name jew, as everybody knows, comes from jerusalem, but that seems to be an addition to the city's name which was anciently ursalem or rusalem. the ur part of this seems to be of importance.

the hebrew legend is of course that abraham came from sumeria and while this is difficult to impossible to corroborate the ur part of jerusalem does seem to actually be sumerian, rather than semitic. that seems to be correct.

the best we can do with archaeology is point out that something happened after cyrus. there may or may not have been an assyrian destruction horizon. it's not entirely clear. but something happened with the persians, and the people that we call the jews after about -550 showed up with them, from iraq, under heavy zoroastrian religious influence, and apparently adopting phoenician language when they got there.

what exactly happened to the sumerians is a really foundational question because we know now that they were so important. they weren't semites - they weren't babylonians, assyrians or arabs. they weren't elamites or any of the early indo-european groups. they seem to have come from the caucasus mountains, where kartvelian and armenian people live today.

and they may have kind of become jews, sort of, in a way we don't really understand. that seems to be what happened to them, somehow.

joseph aoun is the most sumerian-looking middle eastern politician that i've ever seen.

https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/how-did-ancient-sumerians-look-like-video

we need to return to higher entrance requirements.

we're allowing far too many muslim hooligans into the country.

canada needs to do a lot more to protect people who speak out against fascist governments from reprisal by them.

we're losing our reputation as a free society and becoming a global laughing-stock on the brink of backwardsness.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/15/world/canada/canada-iran-arrests-death.html

so, the caramel shit is like a yellow custard. it's actually kind of bland, as custard tends to be, which is surprising because it smelled very strong. alas. i would not suggest trying to use this as caramel milk mix after all.

the cookies ended up having too much chocolate, so i had to eat them with a fork, and then they froze to the plate, so i scraped them off into the custard. i now have yellow custard with crumbled peanut butter and chocolate-butterscotch chip cookies with caramel topping, which is also pretty good. 

i used the rest of the chips up in the second bowl of custard. 

is this a dessert? i found it contained enough calories to be a meal. i won't eat anything else today.

that gets one of the last more abstract items out of the cupboard. i still have a lot of cans of soup, tomato sauce, canned tomatoes, crackers, oxo cubes and tamarind sauce that can be used in the other things i've mentioned but only the hot and sour soup, and the broccoli soup, which i think is going to be a normal addition to my diet, is extra to my regular meal cycle. i've really managed to eat through just about all of it.

for context, i had three food bank runs - one in may, one in august and one in october. i went to three places each time. i am trying very hard to make sure i actually eat everything, no matter how outside my normal diet it might be. somebody gave me free food when i needed it. i appreciate that and i'm going to fucking eat it. all of it. some of this stuff is from august of last year, but what's left is mostly canned items from last october, and it will disappear as i catch up on the salads.

people say the left is dead in israel.

you might want to take a closer look at likud before you say that too loudly.

particularly annoying is when you see these far right protesters repeating iranian or hamas propaganda and calling themselves socialists.

there is nothing socialist about ethnic nationalism. that is the definition of far right extremism.

it is extremely important that actual leftists confront these people when you see them on the ground and tell them they are not socialists and don't represent the left, but are fascist foot soldiers advancing the politics of the far right. at best these are progressives/conservatives, but most of them are open fucking nazis.

no leftist would support these far right islamist political organizations on the grounds that they are vehicles for ethnic nationalism. that makes no sense at all.

we need to take our streets back and chase these fascist scumbags polluting them back into the gutter where they belong.

the police will only attack you in canada if you're a socialist.

if you're a right-wing protester, they'll bring you coffee and want to hang out.

it's an embarrassing problem that needs to be addressed by more aggressive political oversight. there needs to be a lot of fired police officers in ontario.

we saw this weekend that the toronto police force is full of nazi thugs that will stand and watch right-wing nazi protesters engage in an obvious vicious hate march, without intervening in the slightest. these nazi officers are refusing to enforce the law, because they are in agreement with the nazi protesters. it's that simple.

we already knew that, in canada - that there's a serious problem with the police force being infiltrated by the far right.

and we've known for many years that there is no rule of law in canada, that the parliament will pass laws, and that neither the police nor the courts will enforce them.

as i've stated a few times, it's relatively clear that trump wants to negotiate and what he wants to negotiate is american dominance into the iranian oil market. this is the problem. it's the source of restraint and why it's taking so long. trump doesn't want to pull the trigger because he wants to take control. the mistake he's making is treating iran like a rational actor when it isn't one, which should be abundantly clear. the iranians are repeatedly attacking multiple entities that could completely wipe them out, with little regard to consequence, because they think that everything is determined by their make believe, imaginary god. if trump would give up on his delusion about "making a deal" and just wipe them out, this would be over by now. but he probably wouldn't have done it in the first place if he didn't intend to get an agreement in the end.

socialists and other leftists on the ground seeking regime change and revolutionary overthrow need to look beyond the united states and work to tear down the regime without them. this is regrettable as the americans remain the most powerful force on the planet, but's trump intentions are clear enough. if the iranian left wants to salvage this, it need to get out in front of the us military, and not wait for it to show up.

now, some people might argue that the united states doesn't need iranian oil, but this is a foolish argument. oil is a non-renewable resource. it doesn't matter how much oil the united states has today, it will eventually run out and, when it does, it will need to look elsewhere. it is in america's strategic interest to control as much foreign oil as possible and dump it all into it's petroleum reserves for later. controlling middle eastern oil is not about today, it's about tomorrow.

the trump administration believes that the world will be running on oil for the next several decades. i certainly hope they are wrong, and think the evidence suggests that they are wrong, but that is what they think. on some level, though, they might be right. the united states, and the united states alone, may continue to run on oil for decades to come, while the rest of the world  moves past it. in fact, the  middle east may find itself in the awkward situation relatively soon where the united states is it's only remaining major market. 

the united states clearly thinks controlling oil is a strategic necessity and it thinks that because, at least right now, it has no intention of transitioning to clean energy. so it wants a friendly regime in iran that will send them the oil instead of to china. that's the point. 

socialists on the ground should not care what trump's lame duck plans are, they should take advantage of the situation to dismantle the worst fascist theocracy on the planet and replace it with a mandate from the masses.