i have not been keeping up to date on the conflict in mali. africa is such a giant place, and what's happening on the ground is so difficult to get decent information about due to the fact that it remains a technological backwater, that i tend to block it out. i mean, you need to block things out.

these conflicts are all about oil and minerals and diamonds, and there's generally three sides, if you ignore all the complexities between the proxies: the americans and chinese are competing with each for colonial influence, while indigenous voices usually struggle to be heard, at all. the americans have taken over for the british (the french, in some ways, never really left), while the chinese have taken over for the russians. but, it's the same basic conflict.

and, sometimes the nato forces are the lesser evil, while, sometimes, the chinese forces are - although the cubans, when they were active, were legitimately almost always good guys. it was only ever the cubans that were worthy of serious moral support....

what canada has historically done in these situations is try and focus on the humanitarian side of the nato missions. and, sometimes that means being the softer face of something rather nasty and rather evil, which invites a lot of valid criticism. but, the reality is that we often have the choice of trying to minimize the slaughter or doing nothing in the face of it at all - we cannot offer a meaningful front of resistance. we just can't.

on top of that, we have our own mining interests, and they tend to be some of the worst human rights abusers going.

and, we have our own geo-political interests, as well, which i'll get to in a moment.

the last time i checked in to what was happening in mali, you had these rebel groups coming in from the north with weapons stolen from ghadaffi, and they were causing havoc in certain oil-producing regions. these are your typical saudi-backed lunatics that want to implement a strict religious order (including the enslavement or worse of the black africans in the south of the country), but this is really a conflict over who gets to control the supply of oil. so, it's essentially a conflict between arabs and europeans over who gets to steal the oil from the africans. much of the history of western africa is about arabs and europeans competing with each other, to determine who is the more brutal colonizer.

what canada is likely to be doing in this situation is two things. first, canada specializes in protecting civilian populations in these conflicts - which is very important to the nato mission, because the intent is to win hearts & minds. it's really a fluke of history that we managed to make ourselves the hewers of aid supplies and drawers of water like this, but it's what we do - it's what we're trained to do, and we're good at it, too. we'll also no doubt be on the front lines of this, trying to push out the tuareg rebels.

any development that follows from this mission will be created in the broader scope of the military objective of controlling the oil field. but, will anybody remember why the road was built, in the end?

as exporters of oil, is this even in our interest?

well, it is if it lets us duck out of getting too involved in ukraine.

and, that is the real purpose of pearsonian peace-keeping. rather than get bogged down in vietnam, we helped the empire build roads in africa - a no less important task for the projection of global power, but a far more benign one.

i'm consequently going to leave the criticism for historians - so long as the longer term strategy does, in fact, work itself out. if we start invading russia, this negates it's own worth, and all bets are off.

americophobia, like islamophobia, is entirely rational.

so, expect the liberals & ndp to start accusing anybody that criticizes their non-plan on emissions reductions as being russian spies.

to me, the biggest story that came out of the russia hoax is the revelation that american liberals are, in fact, as stupid as american conservatives - that the stupidity is an american thing, rather than a conservative thing.

i actually don't expect this to work, here.

notley is done, anyways. her election was a fluke. and, she's blown the one opportunity that the province had to stop itself from imminent collapse due to the resource curse. but, part of me would like to see trudeau fall on his own sword.

go ahead, justin.

call me a russian spy.

i dare you.

http://nationalpost.com/news/world/notorious-russian-troll-farm-also-took-swipes-at-canadian-targets-oil-pm

so, what is it, alt-right?

do you want to accept us?

or do you want to pay a tax for refusing to?

these are your choices.

the functional difference facing society is this: do you want to accept the scientific fact of gender fluidity, or do you want to maintain these arbitrary concepts of gender exclusivity, at the expense of maintaining a large social welfare state?

the idea that you can force boys to be boys and force girls to be girls isn't an actual choice in front of you - because these are not categories that exist in biology, but categories that only exist in disney films.

and, frankly, i'm happy to live a bourgeois life on disability, if you won't let me work. but, you have to allow for this. you can't just tell us to starve. even the christians have a problem with this.

a proper cost-benefit analysis would expose the stupidity of holding to fairy tales. but, the social sciences aren't good at math.

i mean, maybe we could have a debate about why the collective should determine jordan's hair cut for him, while we're at it.

maybe we can pick out his clothes for him.

tell him who he should want to have sex with, where he should piss, what he should smoke.

nonono. he has to listen.

because we said so.

i think that this is a part of the disconnect, and it comes out of the fact that christianity is a collectivist and authoritarian system of thought that thinks it can write rules that other people have to follow.

even if the jordan petersons of the world could manage to pass a decree with 95% support, i still don't care - because it's not up for the collective to make these decisions on the behalf of an individual. it's just going to increase the chances that we're going to end up in a court.

so, nothing can come of such a debate. and, it's not worth wasting time over.

that said, you'll notice i'm not out there trying to shut him down, either. i think these people are harming their own cause - which is also my cause. and, i'd rather they let him circle jerk to the choir and find something better to do.

no, listen, i don't know what you think a debate with somebody like jordan peterson would be like.

so long as he didn't make any factual errors, i'd probably let him finish. without interrupting him.

and, i'm not likely to say much besides "that's nice.", or "you're entitled to your opinion."....

...because i ultimately don't have any interest in winning a debate with somebody like this. or really any interest in bothering to listen to him express his viewpoints on the matter at all.

it's of no relevance to me.

in the end, i'd be more likely to make an argument about the uselessness of bourgeois rights - and how rights aren't something that come from a legislature, but something that come from lived experience.

which isn't to say i don't support the amendments, so much as to suggest that i don't think they're going to actually make anybody's lives better.

i made no effort to agitate for these amendments.

because, news flash: i'm not going to follow the law, anyways. i haven't up to now. if the thing gets defeated, or reversed, i'm not going to change my behaviour, either.

so, it's only at the moment that he tries to physically intervene that i have some reason to care what he thinks. and, at that point, i'm more likely to call the police than i am to try and debate with him.

individual rights aren't up for debate like this. we take them for ourselves. and, we fight with those that want to restrict them.

i can't have a mid-life crisis, because i never grew up in the first place.

but we'd be better off if more people had more mid-life crises, younger - and stopped snapping out of them.

we should be thinking of mid-life crises as though they're moments of clarity, not moments of insanity.

because, it's our 30s that are always our low points.

that moment of transcendence comes when we realize we've spent our lives running from ourselves, and stop doing it. how many of us never get there?

to all you grown-ups, let me ask: where did you find all of these things that are real and true?

was it under your bed?

in your closet?

at your place of employment?

in your sex life?

or did you, in truth, just delude yourself into living in denial - like your parents did.

for that's what being an adult is really about, isn't it?

i'm ok with being 40 and still wishing there was something real, wishing there was something true.

'cause all i've learned as i've aged is that there really isn't anything real, really isn't anything true.

did they tell camus to grow up, or what?

so, my retarded crackhead neighbour is now apparently complaining about the fresh air.

the oxygen is cutting off my carbon monoxide supply and sobering me up. this is a travesty.

hey. it's working. let's hope she's gone, soon.

this is awesome.

https://www.dezeen.com/2017/07/12/parthenon-of-books-marta-minujin-installation-forbidden-kassel-germany-documenta-14/

the idea that we're going to throw away music, poetry or culture by discarding religion is just ignorant. dawkins tends to argue we should keep it, but he's maybe not aware of the actual history.

most of the art we connect to christianity is absurdly over-rated. and, there's no deficit of secular art since the renaissance, either. it's a false binary.

which isn't to say we should burn down the sistine chapel, so much as it is to suggest we should approach it like a museum. i'd rather hang out at the parthenon, myself.

today is reznor day....

i only got halfway through machina I on the corgan kick before i had to stop. machina II was better. but, it gets spotty after the stigmata ost.

the air is clearing out in the bedroom, if perhaps even getting worse in the living room. i'm going to have to really clear out the cabinets, as it's coming up behind them. but i need to be sure i've fixed the bedroom up, first.

it's warm today. finally...