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.

the caramel jello is basically a large glass of caramel flavoured soy milk, manipulated to congeal and at with a spoon.

it might be better to just stir it in the glass.

yeah. i made the caramel jello with soy milk, but it looks like it is setting fine, it's just taking a little longer. it's something like caramel pie filling but a little creamier. apparently, it's actually french. i don't think this will need the sauce, which i'll use for the cookies.

the cookie recipe is not going to be very complex. it's a package of mix that you add water and margarine to. i'm going to add the chocolate and butterscotch chips, bake for ten minutes and then add the caramel sauce when it's done. that's it.

one of the last food bank items was a package of peanut butter cookie mix, along with some kind of caramel sauce. i'm not sure exactly what the caramel thing is. it looks like some kind of caramel jello. it has arabic writing on it. there are instructions.

but i suspect i'm going to use the caramel sauce for the peanut butter cookies, instead.

i've also purchased dark chocolate and butter scotch baking chips to put in the cookie dough, so these are going to be peanut butter chocolate-butterscotch chip cookies with caramel topping. and i'm gong to make these things tonight.

the idea that the kurds are being asked to fight america's wars and being drawn into a conflict that isn't theirs, and of which they have a high likelihood of being abandoned, is a false narrative. closer to the truth is that america (with israel) is fighting kurdistan's war for it. the uprisings over the last several decades have all been fundamentally kurdish uprisings. the kurds have been targeted by successive regimes in tehran, and other iranian centres, for centuries. they have immense self-interest in toppling this regime, which is the point. i would not have proposed the idea if it were not in their interest.

there are some things to take note of in the analysis.

the kurds are often presented in western media as a stateless people seeking a state and that is not correct. the kurdish culture is one of a few remaining cultures where statelessness is a way of life, which is the reason they keep generating the interests of anarchists. western (or eastern) anarchist theorists grappling with ways to get out of capitalism should avoid applying their ideas to what is a largely agrarian tribal population. the kurds are not anarchists in a western theoretic or academic sense, but they do live an indigenous way of life that closely approximates the ideas expounded on in academic anarchist literature. the academics try to get empirical studies from the kurds to see if their ideas are usable or not. but the point i'm making is that the idea that the kurds actually want a westphalian nation-state is a misconception. the kurds are stateless and want to remain stateless, and for that reason they seek arrangements with the surrounding countries to allow them to maintain their stateless autonomy. for obvious reasons, none of the states in the surrounding areas can quite deal with them or know what to do with them; they will neither secede nor assimilate. they want to remain in the country, without participating in it. the turks and iranians see them as a threat to turkish and iranian identity (although they are iranians and not turks) while the religious arab states see them as a threat to islam, because they at best follow a syncretic version of islam and in truth are really no muslims at all, as most iranians are not. iranians are on average not any more religious than any other white european people, which is what they largely actually are.

to that end, it's worth pointing out that the ethnic divisions in iran are something that the kurds are aware of. the kurds are not likely to try to conquer the arab or indian parts of the iranian geopolitical space but rather to restrict themselves to the iranian plateau and the areas of iran that are inhabited by iranian speakers, which is the north and central parts. there is a slice of iran that is arab and a slice of iran that is indian or pakistani. the kurds will not want anything to do with conquering or governing these regions.

in the end, the kurdish goal will not be to conquer territory, to establish a state or to take over tehran, but to retreat back to the mountains. their goal will be a constitutional framework that allows for kurdish sovereignty in iran, not a kurdish state separate from iran. they value their statelessness. they don't want a state. thus, some commentators will argue that the kurds have been betrayed or taken advantage of, but the question before them is whether they can get the agreements they want, and not whether they can capture territory or build industry. in that sense, they are happy to be "betrayed" and they want to be "abandoned". they want the centralized states to fuck off and leave them alone.

it is consequently true that the kurds are an incomplete solution to regime change in iran, but that's not important in supporting it. as the kurds do not want to govern iran, the collapse of the iranian state in the kurdish regions, and the regions close to the kurdish regions, has no real or direct relevance on the iranian regime, except to act as a catalyst for a further uprising. the point is for the kurds to act as inspiration and perhaps as allies for the other ethnic iranian groups to tear down a government that is largely seen as enforcing arabic colonization on them. 

conversely, the regime is likely to find itself with a lingering support base in the arabic provinces of the southwest of the country, and the kurds are likely to seek avoiding getting into that fight. if iran collapses altogether, those areas may even find themselves governed by baghdad.

so, there's certain subtleties with the kurds that our media doesn't seem to understand well. the idea that we're taking advantage of them or abandoning them is not quite right, as what they actually want is isolation and stateless sovereignty. it is true that america has had some leaders that don't quite respect them, but it has really never been true that the americans have turned against them, in a way that is important to them, which is why they keep coming back. they are not naive about shifting alliances. they live in a reality where friendship is always tenuous and alliances are always shifting. western analysts may see something wrong with america's shifting priorities, but that is just real life to indigenous peoples, and has been for thousands of years.

if the kurds do launch an offensive, be rest assured that they will be seeking their own objectives and acting out of their own agency and in their own self-interest. they are not a pawn to be moved around on the board but a queen parked in the middle of it, controlling movement in every direction.

that being said, i want to point out that the iranians have fired at both turkey and at nato assets on cyprus. there are grounds to invoke article 5, although it doesn't appear like that's being taken seriously right now.

the iranian state cannot be reasoned with, it must be destroyed. i would support invoking article 5.

it's actually rather clear that what trump is trying to articulate in his call for other powers to escort their own damned traffic through the strait of hormuz is that it's not america's responsibility to protect non-american ships from attack by iran. trump isn't asking for help in controlling the straits, he's pointing out that it's not america's fucking problem if iran shoots at you, and america isn't going to get bogged down protecting global shipping.

he's right. if the british want to protect their interests, let them do that themselves. why should america do that?

personally, i would rather see the world avoid the straits. don't send your warships there to protect your merchant vessels, reroute them. and let the gulf countries figure out on their own that they have to fight these guys the easy way or the hard way. then, let iran suffer the consequences of blockading itself.

no effort should be put into escorting vessels. effort should be put into sending troops, including local troops from close countries, to control the straits and into dismantling iran's missile capabilities. iran should be permanently driven from the coast, which should be annexed by the uae or oman, as a consequence and as punishment.

it's spring in iran.

it's spring in iran.

IT'S SPRING IN IRAN.

wooh!

the fire will clean it. the fire will make it better.

awaken the fire.

awaken the sun.

wake up, iran. it's been too long.

it is time for iran to exit it's dark age and re-enter the light.

just.

stop.

drop.

and burn.

you are going to dance in the fire until the institutions burn.

and when they force you to stop you will refuse.

that's it. it's over.

iran,

this is how you're going to do this. listen up. get ready.

what you're going to do is have the most barn-storming, zoroaster-channeling, rebirthing, sun-worshipping nowruz in iranian history. you are going to wake the sun up with a bang. and the regime will crumble.

hurry along now. get to it.

time is of the essence.

what is incitement of hatred in canada?

Public incitement of hatred

319 (1) Every one who, by communicating statements in any public place, incites hatred against any identifiable group where such incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace is guilty of

(a) an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years; or

(b) an offence punishable on summary conviction.

Wilful promotion of hatred

(2) Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group is guilty of

(a) an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years; or

(b) an offence punishable on summary conviction.

Wilful promotion of antisemitism

(2.1) Everyone who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes antisemitism by condoning, denying or downplaying the Holocaust

(a) is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years; or

(b) is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.

Defences

(3) No person shall be convicted of an offence under subsection (2)

(a) if he establishes that the statements communicated were true;

(b) if, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text;

(c) if the statements were relevant to any subject of public interest, the discussion of which was for the public benefit, and if on reasonable grounds he believed them to be true; or

(d) if, in good faith, he intended to point out, for the purpose of removal, matters producing or tending to produce feelings of hatred toward an identifiable group in Canada.

Defences — subsection (2.1)

(3.1) No person shall be convicted of an offence under subsection (2.1)

(a) if they establish that the statements communicated were true;

(b) if, in good faith, they expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text;

(c) if the statements were relevant to any subject of public interest, the discussion of which was for the public benefit, and if on reasonable grounds they believed them to be true; or

(d) if, in good faith, they intended to point out, for the purpose of removal, matters producing or tending to produce feelings of antisemitism toward Jews.

Forfeiture

(4) If a person is convicted of an offence under subsection (1), (2) or (2.1) or section 318, anything by means of or in relation to which the offence was committed, on such conviction, may, in addition to any other punishment imposed, be ordered by the presiding provincial court judge or judge to be forfeited to Her Majesty in right of the province in which that person is convicted, for disposal as the Attorney General may direct.

Exemption from seizure of communication facilities

(5) Subsections 199(6) and (7) apply, with any modifications that the circumstances require, to subsection (1), (2) or (2.1) or section 318.

Consent

(6) No proceeding for an offence under subsection (2) or (2.1) shall be instituted without the consent of the Attorney General.

https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-319.html

i saw several signs in the paper held by participants in the anti-israel hate march that clearly qualify as public incitement to hatred and it seems as though there were no elated arrests. these laws exist and are not being enforced.

it would appear as though the police require better training to help them better identify incitement to hatred and make more arrests.

the uk media should alter it's use of the term "allies" to either (1) replace it with the term "axis" or (2) not use it at all, as it's misleading and imprecise.

with that point in mind, it's instructive to understand the amount of capitalist support that hitler received, with the intent of sending him to fight the soviets. that was the point - the germans were supposed to be a proxy to fight the russians with. by extension, it's important to understand that the reason the americans had to get involved in the first place was to stop the russians from winning. there is good evidence explaining that japan was nuked to keep the russians out.

it follows that the question as to what side the united states actually entered the war on has never been entirely clear. they seem to have been more interested in containing the russians than fighting the axis powers.

one may honestly point out that the allies seemed more like an axis of a few major powers, and the axis seemed more like a lot of allied nations. that observation would be underlying the semantic shift in the colloquial use of the term, but it's still masking the basic point, which is that it looks more like the uk (and canada) lost the war and joined the axis powers than that the allies actually won. what the uk media calls the allies today is the axis powers, plus the uk (and canada) and they are fighting the old allied powers, minus the uk (and canada).

this is a map of the world in 1941, before the united states entered the war:

the blue and the red are the allies. the map doesn't include the united states because they hadn't declared war yet and i'm trying to avoid involving the pile of latin american states that entered the war with the united states. nor does it include the chinese opposition, except for the little dot, because china was in very bad shape at the time. 

the black is the axis. it does not include spain or turkey, who were technically "neutral" but both functionally aligned with germany. the swedes were not able to truly maintain neutrality, either. nor does it include iran, which was invaded by britain to prevent it from aligning with germany, or the various "arab opposition groups", which were all aligned with the nazis. the saudis are best understood as an arab opposition group, in context. technically, saudi arabia was also under british occupation (following world war one). ukraine was aligned with the nazis as well, but that's difficult to describe in a map like this.

i really don't like the uk media's use of the term "allies". 

the way the uk media uses the term "allies" includes spain, germany, italy, finland, ukraine, japan and many countries that were occupied by the axis powers during the second world war, and yet excludes the russians and the chinese, who were by far the two most important members of the allied powers, excluding the united states.

if you want to hold to world war two language, and i'd suggest you should probably drop it altogether, it would be most accurate to decide that the uk (and, with it, canada) has since joined the axis powers and refer to this alliance as the axis and not as the allies.

as it is, the way the uk media uses the term is right out of orwell's darkest fantasies.

the broad direction of canada, which is moving to align itself with a berlin-constantinople axis in order to meddle in the internal affairs of eastern europe, should be extremely concerning to the broader free world. 

the canadian foreign has embarrassingly decided to go to turkey for talks with their nazi thug dictator, who is a disgusting stain on nato.

i would like to call on the people of turkey to rise up and depose their own dictator.

skeptics have been arguing for years that climate change is really just the enso (el nino) and you're being led around by your nose. but a predicted outcome of global warming was increased ocean temperatures and what's been happening over the last ten years or so is that global warming is actually breaking the enso. this is creating repeatably wrong weather forecasts, as much of the meteorological profession bought into the fad, right as it was collapsing itself. the models are way too enso-heavy.

where i am, the increasingly warm atlantic is increasingly affecting the temperature in the east of north america in ways that really are not supposed to happen, as it breaks the direction of the earth's spin. but it's happening. thermodynamics are pretty fundamental. if you needed reminding, there you have it. nobody knows if it's a permanent change or not but, right now, those hot atlantic temperatures are drowning the east in humidity and el nino is almost irrelevant, as it's coming out in the wash of broader sea temperature rises.

there's lots of other things happening, but our climate is becoming dominated by the atlantic, and that's not just climate change. it breaks the way that the climate is supposed to work, which clearly needs some more work to understand right. and the meteorologists are resisting this and doubling down, which is giving us bad forecasts.

it looks like an early spring here in detroit.

i don't think the canadian government should be trying to stop any quds day marches in canada.

first, i think it's important that these people identify themselves because, second, much of what would go on would credibly fall under behaviour considered to be hate speech in canada. arrests could and in fact probably should be made.

to be prosecuted for hate speech in canada, what you need to have done is incite hatred in a public space in a way that is legitimately political. they won't prosecute private communication, and i think they shouldn't. the law is intended to criminalize hate speech that has political intent, rather than just as somebody's opinion.

canada is about as lenient as it gets when it comes to speech rights, but this is the perfect example of the kind of speech that is in fact prohibited by law in canada and which canadians do not and should not tolerate.

so, they should let them march and prepare to make hate speech arrests and put organizers in jail.

the religious are moaning and whining about iranian followers getting bombed during their al quds ceremony, where the state whips the sheeple up into a frenzy, to go out and yell anti-semitic and anti-american chants.

in fact, nothing could be more appropriate than getting bombed by israel, as you are running through the streets chanting "death to israel". it serves them fucking right. it's a little bit of justice being served.

i've been calling iran a fascist state and people don't seem to be able to believe it or something. if you want to see just how much of a nazi society iran really is, go find some footage of one of these demonstrations. it looks like germany in the late 30s.

so, let's bring up the old cliche - if you could go back in time and bomb an ss march, would you do it?

you need to really see any level of tolerance to this regime at all through the proper filters. it really exposes a lot of biases, and it doesn't look good on people.

while i don't have a lot of sympathy for carbon users, and am not very interested in gas prices, i do want to point out that the cause and effect of price hikes is being a little smudged, and that you're mostly actually just getting ripped off by greedy assholes who are really just using the war as a convenient excuse to price gouge.

there should be laws put in place that prevent hiking prices during wars, but you'd have to get somebody to declare war first.

i can imagine almost no worse way to waste money and resources than this.

which is just proof that mr carney is an excellent conservative prime sinister.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/pm-carney-announces-35b-investment-in-arctic-defence-northern-infrastructure/

the lebanese parliament has taken a position that essentially relegates themselves to a dhimmi group in the arab league. they just want to pay the mob bosses to leave them alone. this is a historical position, as lebanon has lived under muslim rule for centuries. the lebanese are used to this. but it's not acceptable; it's a cop-out.

if lebanon wants to be a country, it needs to have a monopoly on violence in it's own borders.

if it refuses to do that, it can't be a country and will need to be partitioned. the time for holding on to empty rhetoric about "territorial integrity" is past. a country that cannot defend itself is not sustainable and cannot exist.

if canada wants to actually help, it should be sending soldiers to lebanon to train the military. at the end of the day, it is the lebanese that will need to stop paying the jizya, take up arms and defeat hezbollah, or we will need to stop pretending that lebanon is a country, and do away with it.

if canada wants to help, it has the expertise to help train the lebanese. that is what they need. not food.

lebanon is not a third world country. it's considered middle income. they can grow food. they have jobs.

they need help fighting the fuckers, not help feeding their people.

canada is the pathetic sick man of the oecd, writing checks for charitable donations across the world to generate respect and seek influence, and getting nothing but contempt in return.

there's lots of wealth in this world. the world doesn't need wealth. it needs leadership. we don't have it.

they don't need our money. we need our money.

i would support sending canadian soldiers to lebanon to fight hezbollah before i would support throwing money at empty attempts at philanthropy that will do nothing to stabilize the region.

i don't think that sending $40 million in aid to lebanon is very high impact, especially if it's for food. they're not experiencing a famine in lebanon and the people being moved out are not being blockaded. rather, this is the kind of stupid, self-serving philanthropy intended for domestic audiences to feel good about themselves that has given canada a low level of global respect. it does nothing to address any issue of substance or concern about iranian terrorist proxies in the region and the money will in all likelihood just end up stolen by corrupt elements of the organized crime networks in the region.

that money would have been better distributed to build housing for refugees in canada.

but, if the canadian government wants to do something in the world instead of something here, which i may strongly suggest it should reanalyze it's priorities around, it should be sending resources to help fight the terrorist networks, not basically funneling them money. 

lebanon certainly has some problems, but they don't need food. they need guns to fight off hezbollah with.

i was thinking as i was eating a salad that i can be fucking sarcastic in my foreign policy proposals. proposing a blockade of iran and telling the iranians to suffer the consequence of shitting in their own bed for shooting at ships is pretty vicious, really. it's sort of sadistic. but, sadism is one of the most blunt forms of comedy, because it is so absurd. really awful forms of punishment have a deep level of comedic value to them, which is really what i'm going for.

you'll have to forgive me. i don't watch tv. so, maybe i'm summarizing something that already exists, in which case i apologize. but there should be a resultant tv show called sarcastic dad that is about taking cruel and unusual punishment to it's logical conclusion in extremely dark comedy. these little fucking punks are going to get what's coming to 'em in the most ironic way possible, with flair and with shock value.

it would get cancelled, but that would just be the aura of it.

a lot of people, including myself, were loudly in support of regime change in iran way back in 2003, even as we were arguing against invading iraq. a lot of us have held these opposing positions the whole fucking time.

i would have preferred for the united states to have done this through the un. but so be it. the un is broken.

it's funny how everyone that supported iraq is opposed to iran, and everybody that opposed iraq supports iran. it doesn't mean anything on it's face, but it's true.

while a lot of former iraq supporters are going to claim they learned something, the reality is that they clearly didn't. even if they don't realize it, the difference is in the nature of the regime and the nature of the opposition to it.

iraq was a secular regime and iran is a theocracy. that's the difference.

i am not in support of the assassination of iranian scientists. that strikes me as of no utility whatsoever.

the americans are focusing on destroying iran's more conventional war machines, which is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to dismantle the state. they are not killing enough clerics, enough judges or enough of the deep state, and it's clear enough this won't work unless they refocus on wiping out the ruling class and the state's institutions, along with the weapons.

winner: russian and chinese weapons manufacturers.

loser: american taxpayers

the americans should close the straits themselves and sink anything coming in and out.

the americans clearly should have ensured they had control of the gulf before they started bombing. it's not america's responsibility to govern iran, but it is their responsibility to make coherent war plans. historically, the americans have had naval dominance over this waterway and the idea that iran could unilaterally close it would be absurd on it's face.

it's not that anything really changed. the united states still has naval dominance, but they appear to have allowed the iranians to put mines in the straits due to not foreseeing it happening. i warned you when this started that the obliteration would have to be complete and immediate, or it would open up opportunities to get in. anything iranian operating in the gulf should have been immediately bombed; it seems like it wasn't. the iranians themselves will suffer the most from this, so i can see how it didn't seem like a real threat, but somebody dropped the ball at centcom in not being aggressive enough. now, this is going to require clearing, which is going to take some time. further, mine-cleaning ships are not exactly military vessels, and they would be vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

this doesn't change any balance of power, it just creates annoyances and slows things down. it's a demonstration of incompetence by centcom that they let the inferior iranians mine the straits they have naval dominance over, right under their noses. it's an annoyance that's going to cost time and money to address.

that means that demining will have to wait, and there's no really easy way to make the straits usable again in the short run, even if they can send marines in to control the straits, which they should be doing.

i actually think they should do the opposite - they should blockade it and even mine the opening themselves, to prevent anything from getting in and out. demining will legitimately need to wait until moogabooga is eliminated and replaced with a democratically elected leader and iran will need to suffer the consequences of shitting in it's own bed.

on first glance, i would consider an israeli annexation of southern lebanon to be a little over the line. that's too far.

however, some things have to be acknowledged.

- lebanon is a failed state

- lebanon is unable to stop hezbollah

- the muslim colonization of southern lebanon is unsustainable

- israel has suffered terribly from the oct 7th massacre, and some increase in territory is morally justified as a reward for that suffering

when you put all of those things together, israel's need to take control of this territory and the region's need to decolonize it of recent islamization in the face of the collapse of the federal authority actually make the idea fairly reasonable.

however, israel should be making an attempt to get the people out of lebanon, and not just pushing them north. the people being driven out of southern lebanon right now are overwhelmingly not lebanese, but mostly syrian or palestinian. a better destination for the shiites, which is most of them, is iraq. israel should help get them there.

the guy going to the game on the tunnel bus is going to park downtown, pay parking, have a beer downtown, get something to eat, have a beer when he gets back, etc. you take away the bus, he either stays at home or just takes a cab right through downtown without stopping. 

it was the dumbest economic decision imaginable.

i also want to point out that the people on the bus pay taxes, too. for them, the bus is a service and taking it away is taking away a service they were paying for with their taxes, in order to pay for stupid christmas festivals and whatever else that they would largely not give a fuck about. did any regular tunnel bus riders get a tax rebate in return for the service that was taken from them? no - those taxes were rerouted towards other things, and most of those other things are bullshit. now, they're still paying taxes, but they lost this service they used.

when we bring back the tunnel bus, it should just run 24/7.

it's not like windsor has alternatives to the events that the tunnel bus serviced. the logic that the bus is taking money out of the city is deeply flawed; the bus was taking money into the city by increasing foot traffic into it. canceling the bus is redirecting the money elsewhere.

i don't give a fuck about sports and think competition is barbaric. however, a large number of people would take the tunnel bus over to see hockey, football, baseball or basketball games. i may be mistaken, but i don't think there's an nhl or nfl team in windsor. going to a minor hockey league game is not a comparable product.

i go over strictly to see concerts and i don't even go to the big shows. detroit is still a large market. so, i could go see a band like pearl jam in detroit, or see a pearl jam cover band in windsor. pearl jam's not coming to windsor. it's not comparable.

for me, though, i don't even go to the big shows, i go to the underground parties. in the summer, detroit usually has a party going until 7:00 am. in windsor, everything closes at midnight, nowadays. you can't even find a venue open until 2:30 anymore.

so, this idea that windsor is competing with detroit is deeply wrong. windsor is simply not competing with detroit, and there's simply no way to get people that want to go to a game or a show or a party to spend that money here instead. if the mayor of windsor wasn't a retard, he'd be trying to capture some of the multiplier effect of people coming through town to spend money in detroit. instead, he's sending them to lasalle or sandwich to spend that money there, instead.

i think that there needs to be a criminal investigation into this organization to determine why it's doing business in iran.

certainly, any donors are entitled to an explanation as to why they are doing business in iran instead of buying food in canada.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/article/daily-bread-food-bank-says-ship-carrying-90k-worth-of-food-destined-for-toronto-was-hit-in-the-strait-of-hormuz/

i'd like to see some new venues open up on sandwich street.

there's a dom in windsor that should greatly benefit from the new bridge.

worse is this idea that cancelling the tunnel bus is going to coerce me to spend more money in canada. wrong. 

the more correct way to think of it is that the tunnel bus was drawing me into the downtown core on days i wouldn't have otherwise gone downtown at all. i may have taken a few shots before i left, or otherwise spent money downtown on my way to and from the bus. cancelling the bus means i'll spend less money downtown because i have less reason to go downtown, and sending me on a detour to the new bridge is going to see me spend more money in lasalle or sandwichtown, instead. the new bridge is going to shift the centre of the city away from ouellette and to the southwest. in 20 years, we may call this area lasalle-windsor, or go back to calling it sandwich.

it's maybe not realized, although i don't know how people could miss it, that the reason downtown windsor shifted from sandwich town to ouellette in the first place was because the tunnel and the tunnel bus was there. you cancel or shift or undo that and you cancel or shift or undo downtown, because the major reason people go to downtown windsor is to go back and forth from detroit.

the problem with mayor dilbert is that he's a dork-ass family values conservative loser. we need somebody that's more interested in individual rights and less interested in family values and sees the priority in funding things like the tunnel bus, while slashing funding for stupid christmas bullshit.

from what i can tell, the decision to cancel the tunnel bus was broadly unpopular. we'll have to see if it's career ending and if it's a big enough issue to overturn city council, if we can find some candidates willing to put it on the ballot.

i'm hoping that they eventually sell the ambassador bridge to some government, who turns it into a walking bridge.

i'm a five minute walk from the bus station to go under the tunnel, a ten minute bicycle ride from the old bridge (which i've never been on) and at least a 20 minute ride to the new bridge. i don't know exactly how i'm going to access the bridge with a bicycle yet and that will determine the amount of time it takes to get across. then, when i am across, it's a twenty minute ride back to woodward. so, this might end up being an hour detour into town and i might find myself willing to pay to take the bus over, if i had the option, and then bike back around whenever i'm done - at 2:00 am, 4:00 am, 7:00 am, whenever.

i will not have to wait for the tunnel bus at the diner anymore, which often added an extra $10 to the trip, on it's own, and forced me to plan for overnight parties, even if i wasn't totally into them.

if they turn the old bridge into a pedestrian link, it will cut 10-15 minutes of bicycling, in either direction. 

i may eventually just move closer to the new bridge, and i tried to do that last fall, but i wasn't able to find the kind of place i wanted to, and moved downtown instead. i like the new place. there's some issues but i hope they work out. if they don't, i'll have to see if i can maybe even buy a small house near the bridge.

unfortunately, i don't think i currently have the choice to pay $5 to bring my bike across from downtown and then bike around the long way to get home, like i used to. the city took that away. i would hope it's a ballot issue in the next city election.

i can come up with a million better ways to save money than cutting the tunnel bus. the city just wasted millions of dollars on a useless skating rink, and wastes millions of dollars every year on stupid christmas lights. these are things that could and should be cut in order to bring back the tunnel bus, which was a major benefit to living here that is far more valuable than stupid christmas lights.

https://bridgemi.com/michigan-government/tolls-for-new-detroit-windsor-bridge-to-be-cheaper-than-ambassador-tunnel/