all that's left to do in syria is sit there and pretend you haven't lost, and the longer you do it, the more likely you end up with a partition.

and, is that what the neo-cons want? a new south korea in syria, that's going to cost america billions of dollars, in a five hundred year occupation?

are they willing to lose the dardanelles over it?

it's just stubborn and stupid.

trump was right. and, lindsey graham should fuck off.

the best way to transition assad out was always to let him transition himself out, which is what he was trying to do in the first place; the thing that created this mess was an attempt at a syrian constitution, which was vehemently opposed by the saudis as an increase in democratization in the region.

that's right. that's the fucked up reality: this war was launched to prevent syria from transitioning to a democracy.

the russians don't want him there either, and will be helping him transition himself out as soon as the territorial integrity of the country is secure.

see, this is a good idea.

this is what we want.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/damascus-iraq-hit-isil-targets-syria-state-media-181230172409718.html

or, to put it another way: who the fuck cares what lindsay graham thinks, anyways?

the most important ally in the region is neither israel nor saudi arabia but turkey, and whatever delicate balance existed is now blown up - a flop would cement a turko-russian alliance.

and, the point was to prevent that.

you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.

at this point, if trump flops on syria, it's as good as losing the turks altogether.

"but they don't uphold human rights"

like america does, right? what is this, grade two?

if you want to talk about a victory for putin, the dardanelles would be pretty swank. they've had their eye on that one for a while.

there is a deeper lesson here: we have an emperor with no clothes. but, whatever you think of the decision (and i've been clear that i support it.), you can't reverse this sort of thing.

i mean, what the fuck am i going to do in an office?

crunch numbers for the agriculture department? yeah. that sounds like it's not going to be horribly time-consuming, and numbingly boring.

solve equations for a bunch of fucking murderers at defense? yeah, that's not going to make me want to kill myself.

washing dishes is real, it's honest, it's something i can do without hating myself.

i know that people would kill to have the opportunities i've had, but it's not like i ever lied to anybody about it.

if you would have asked me at 17, i would have told you i'm never going to want to work full-time in an office, i'm never going to care about owning property, i'm never going to want a car, i'm never going to want a family - i'd rather work part-time as a dishwasher, and get more free time to work on art, or writing, or whatever my mind is interested in.

and, i heard the same stupid refrain, from everybody around me.

"but, you're young, you'll grow out of it."
"pretty sure i won't."
"you're throwing away opportunity, throwing away options."
"well, if somebody doesn't want something, and they throw that thing away, that means they're throwing away something that isn't of any value to them."

and, i'd get disappointed reactions, but what was the point of pretending otherwise? i'm not going to live somebody else's life, i'm going to live my own. and, it's up to others to move on if they don't like my choices.

but, i kept getting bribed - and i was given good offers, so i took them. and, i ended up with 13 years of schooling that i had almost no interest in.

now, here i am a few weeks shy of 38 and i'm still completely disinterested in working in an office, i still don't want to own property, i still don't want a car, and i still don't want a family; i'd still rather work part time as a dish-washer, and i'm not particularly interested in the opinions of any creditors that i never had any intention of gaining in the first place.

"but, it will hurt your credit rating."

yeah. pity. whatever.

i know - more disappointed looks. but, the root cause of the problem here is not my behaviour - i broadcast myself as clearly as a person can.

people made a choice not to listen, to project their own desires on to me rather than understand what mine were, and react.

if it comes down to it, i'm not going to end up in an office job - i'm going to end up washing dishes part-time.

if you don't fear islam, you're deeply ignorant of it - or just as scary as the religion, itself.

i have to post something like this every once in a while just to get the point across that the existing narrative is ridiculous. and, i was thinking about this the other day, when eating.

hitchens was wrong about iraq - because his assumptions were wrong. see, if saddam hussein were isis, though, he would have been right. so, the irony is that hitchens' argument for the 2003 invasion - while completely wrong, in context - is the perfect argument to use to justify the war against isis. and, it's even ironic that he didn't live to make the point. i'm sure he'd appreciate all of this.

what i'm getting at is that he didn't make an error in logic so much as he made an error in fact; if his perception of iraq under saddam hussein was rooted in reality, rather than american propaganda, he would have been absolutely correct. and, i can't know whether his arguments were just convenient or not, either - if he just thought it was a good excuse. if so, he should have known better, as it didn't take much foresight to realize that if you really did fear the rise of an isis-like group then keeping saddam in place was just about the best thing that could have been done to prevent it, and that creating all of that chaos in iraq was just about the worst thing you could imagine doing. this was certainly my argument in 2003 - that regime change via bliztkrieg from above in iraq was an insane idea. but, here is some more irony - the islamophobic and supposedly racist late hitchens may have simply given the arabs too much credit. once the bogeyman of saddam was removed, they would surely spontaneously generate into a secular pan-arabism, right? what leftist naivete is this, christopher?

in making his arguments, he often made a very salient point: that there is good reason to be afraid of islam. islam is of course a violent system of hetero-patriarchal domination, just like christianity. and, do we not all fear the christian right? so, what is islamophobia, then, if not a rational fear of totalitarianism? and, is it not every good leftist brit's responsibility to be in constant fear of a return to cromwellianism?

well?

see, and, for this reason i don't have any problem acknowledging that i am deeply fearful of islam, and would support just about anything to prevent it's continued growth. this is the fastest growing religion in the world, and thus is my most pertinent ideological foe, as a staunch atheist. it represents everything i am opposed to, and i seek to challenge it any way i possibly can. one must have a certain level of respect for their opponent, even if that respect is not particularly intellectual in nature, and with that respect is a healthy level of fear.

it would be daft to deny any of this.

but, it would be equally daft to deduce that a healthy fear of the continuing spread of islam as an ideological force implies some kind of racial bias against arabs, or turks, or iranians, or berbers, or pakistanis or any other group that professes this faith in statistically significant numbers, as bereft of any value as i claim that it is. there's simply no basis in the deduction; any such accusation is entirely baseless.

so, i will stand in support of islamophobia, even as i denounce racism against groups that statistically lean towards the religion of islam. i will stand in solidarity with the apostates, as i denounce the imams. there is no contradiction in this position - and it is even imperative that we recognize that there isn't, in order to inoculate ourselves from this religion's continuing influence and spread.

https://www.ranker.com/list/companies-in-the-united-states-that-use-prison-labor/genevieve-carlton

it's fitting enough, isn't it, as so many of the british forces killed in world war one to "save democracy" were legally unable to vote, due to not owning property.

https://corporatewatch.org/poppies-prison-labour-and-the-war-machine/

you realize that centipedes are carnivores, right?

so, if you have a population of centipedes in your basement, that means they have a food source. if there's no food, they'll die off or otherwise leave. and, they won't eat food scraps or toothpaste or bits of hair - centipedes need to have a population of live insects to feed on.

this is even the reason that centipedes are considered "beneficial" - they eat other insects.

and, one of their favourite foods is roaches.

so, it is true that you should not kill the centipedes - but it is also true that if you see centipedes frequently, then that means you probably have roaches, too, because that's what they're eating.

the basement i'm in now is actually surprisingly bug free. i saw one of those....i can't even remember what they're called. i'd never seen one before. maple bugs. boxelder, that's right. i've seen one centipede. i've seen a couple of spiders. no roaches, no ants, no earwigs, no termites.

the previous basement had just about everything - spiders, ants, centipedes, oriental roaches, earwigs and i even think i saw a scorpion, at one point.

i'm not an entomologist, but i did take biology through high school (and both the 101/102 in university), and i'd even say i have an interest in it, as demonstrated by the posts here. and, i don't you think you need a specialized degree to identify a roach.

some people are just really dirty liars, that's all.

i think i'm finally feeling a little better.

was that actually the quarterly stomach ache? is it now officially winter? i guess we'll find out.