it's relatively obvious that the united states orchestrated the recent bombing in moscow. when the united states pulled out of afghanistan, i pondered whether the intent was to use afghanistan as a front to destabilize the russians (and chinese) and that seems to have been the correct analysis in the end. these are operations that the cia wants to keep a distance from, and an afghan terror group is the perfect cover for it. this is unlikely to be the last isis attack on russia, and i'd expect some inside china in the near future.

basically, the united states is trying to draw russia back into afghanistan, which actually indicates somewhat of an intelligence failure because putin isn't the godless communist his predecessors were but actually somewhat of a conservative that actually agrees with the harsh brutality of religious fundamentalism. he doesn't want to pick a fight with the muslims at all. hence putin's attempt to blame it on ukrainians.

the russians need to figure out how to counterattack. they're starting to look like chumps.

i strongly support suicide rights and think this is the right legal decision.

however, the situation is a little bit fishy to me. if the woman is as capable as suggested, she ought to just kill herself, if she really wants to. it's a diagnosis from a distance, but it actually strikes me as a call for help, or perhaps for attention.

maybe this woman is of sound mind, but some other person in the same context might not be and the situation does suggest some deeper level of oversight is required. the doctors should be able to explain their decision to somebody on request.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-maid-father-daughter-court-injunction-judicial-review-decision-1.7154794

this demand for 700 prisoners by hamas indicates that they have no understanding of what they're facing. it truly is delusional.

not only will there not be 700 prisoners released, but all remaining hamas fighters in rafah will either be captured and imprisoned or killed.

there's not going to be a hamas after this.

like, they're calling for a ceasefire. they don't get it. a ceasefire suggests a continuation of the war later on. that is delusional. this is the end; they've lost, the war is over.

israel should be explicit in calling for hamas to surrender.

i can guess hamas' response:

(and, of course, hamas are exactly the kind of fucking creeps that wear their sunglasses at night, too)

egypt should have taken on a greater level of responsibility in dealing with gaza decades ago and if it finds itself overwhelmed or destabilized it should acknowledge that it's the result of decades worth of negligent policy, take ownership of it's mistakes and seek to adjust for the future.

i would welcome the ability to use rent payments on credit reports.

however, i don't see what relevance that policy has to any of the substantive affordable housing supply concerns people are facing across the country.

there needs to be a clear understanding that we don't need more corporate childcare services but rather need to adjust the education system so that it eliminates the after school gap, which shouldn't exist. this is a systemic social problem and throwing money at babysitters is a bandaid solution, not a lasting one.

depending on age and jurisdiction, kids get out of school between 2:00 pm and 4:00 pm, whereas most people get off work between 4:00 pm and 6:00 pm, creating a gap of potentially up to four hours that needs to be filled in. there's no comprehensible reason this exists at all.

first, kids should be kept in classes until 4:30 pm, minimum, giving them up to a half hour to get home on the bus before 17:00. second, the schools themselves should offer seamless child care services for kids that have parents that work later than 17:00 or that need to call in on special occasions. 

ken dryden had a great plan to address this, and it's extremely disappointing that the liberals have caved to market pressure in adopting a private sector plan instead. i supported the dryden plan, but this $10/day childcare scheme just seems like a foolish non-solution. there's no reason to have separate childcare and education systems, they should be integrated seamlessly, and it should be run by the provinces.

i don't generally have fiscally conservative instincts, but wasting taxpayer money on babysitters strikes me as an exceedingly poor use of public funds that should be starkly criticized. this is an expensive and foolish approach to a problem that is being caused by school days that are simply too short.

listen, if you really hate what israel is doing, the answer is simple: boycott middle eastern oil.

if it wasn't for the oil wealth in the arab states, which is obscene, the united states wouldn't need to maintain a military base in the region. it's not exactly that simple, granted, but israel is not going to hold the sway in washington that it does now, once the world moves off of oil.

what i think is that gaza needs to be dismantled and hamas (along with all other like-thinking groups) needs to be obliterated and the israelis are actually doing the world a favour in getting their hands dirty actually doing it.

we're supposed to be concerned about palestinian civilians. hamas only kills jews every once in a while, they spend most of their time oppressing and slaughtering arabs for not being muslim enough. further, there hasn't been an election in gaza in almost 20 years and the area that the supposed civilians are being sequestered into voted for what i believe was a democratic socialist candidate, rather than the fascist hamas. it is true that hamas seized power in the region, never controlled substantive popular support and has been viciously oppressive against it's own population.

but, that's just the point. twenty years is enough time to get out, and it's enough time to radicalize those that don't. this division between hamas and the population is not so clear cut. if you're still there 20 years later, there's a reason for it, and the fiasco around unrwa demonstrates the point: hamas is a major employer in economically hopeless gaza. i believe that something like 30% of the population is employed by hamas, and roughly half is unemployed altogether and reliant on state aid provided by hamas. i've even heard hamas referred to as a religious charity. that's not a minority of bad apples, it's 70% of the trees in the fucking orchard.

it's harsh, but it's real, and the world will be better off for it, in the end. i'm more concerned about what happens after they level the place, and what plans are being put in place to repopulate and rebuild.

i'm sorry this is taking so long, but i'm trying to redesign a massive site while fighting off hackers and reconstructing a complex network with roughly 15 computers on it and dealing with some fucking losers that are drugging me with male hormones, for reasons i don't entirely understand.

i'm not having a good time, as of late. this is a shitty scenario and it could linger for quite some time before i'm able to get these pieces of shit thrown in jail.

america is nobody's friend - not canada's, not ukraine's and not israel's, either.

friendship cannot exist within capitalism; it's an impossibility.

what if the israelis decide this american protectorate thing isn't working for them anymore and decide to cozy up to the chinese, instead?

oops.

this symbolic statement wasn't worth it. it was foolish. heads need to roll.

are dhimmi joe and his binkie really so concerned about the lives of palestinians as to reverse decades of american policy?

the easy answer is that it's for domestic consumption, but the polls don't really support that analysis. while there is a vocal and well-funded pro-palestinian minority that has very right-wing politics and masquerades as liberals on the fake left, the overwhelming majority of americans remain dominantly pro-israel and in support of a ground operation in rafah. dhimmi joe and his binkie are acting against popular opinion in the united states, and not with it.

rather, there are clear geo-political reasons why the united states would oppose the elimination of gaza as a buffer state between israel and egypt, as it could lead to instability in the region. there is a peace treaty between egypt and israel but it's more like a mutual non-intervention agreement. the israelis don't bomb egypt the way they bomb syria or lebanon. further, the murderous dictatorial regime in egypt (which biden did and does back) is not very stable, and some instability could lead to internal revolts. much has been made of the broken saudi-israeli detente, but the saudis are more likely to be concerned about losing their client in egypt to a rival, like the russians.

the americans are so frequently pro-israel that it masks the reality that the actual middle eastern policy is barbarian management via divide and conquer. america seeks to maintain a series of perpetual conflicts in the region, to prevent any single actor from becoming dominant. america's shifting allegiances have to do with ensuring that the fighting never ends and nobody ever wins. a final victory by israel over hamas would consequently be a red line for american geostrategic interests, as it ends a conflict that is supposed to bog down israel into perpetuity and prevent them from expanding outwards.

i think, however, that binkie is misreading the israelis. binkie needs to remember that the jewish state is not what it used to be; today, israel is a fundamentalist theocracy, like all of the other states in the region. while it remains a democracy, it may not be one for much longer and it no longer has the characteristics of a western democracy, which include axioms like the paramount nature of free speech. israel is on a course to become the mirror-reflection of iran.

as bizarre and naive as it sounds, what israel wants is really limited to the promised land. a normal country may want to take advantage of the situation and move settlers into their conquered territories, but israel has been clear about the point for a long time: biblical gaza is where the philistines lived, and was neither in the heretic/hedonistic kingdom of israel nor the divinely protected (until it wasn't) kingdom of judea. the attack on rafah may be vicious, and the israelis may decide to leave troops on the ground (who would argue they shouldn't, after the october attacks?), but there is no imminent threat to the balance of power because the israelis will actually draw their own boundaries as minimal rather than maximal. 

the jews are weird. they always have been.

i'm consequently going to call for the resignation of linda thomas-greenfield, as allowing this resolution to pass was a substantive mistake and i'm going to call for binkie to resign as well, in an exercise of ministerial accountability.

lyin' brian is now a double entendre with a different meaning than it had previously.

hey, i waited until they buried the son of a bitch. 

the man was a horrific crook.

i hope the last words to him were something like "you died? dammit, brian. you had a choice! you had an option!".

i think that kate middleton had an abortion and has a new boyfriend, hence the abortion.

it's going to be an unpopular view right now, but history may decide differently; i think the israelis have no choice but to go into rafah to send the arab world a message that it can't do what hamas did. there can be no mercy. there can be no tolerance. israel has to be ruthless and has to be vicious in order to send a clear message and create a clear disincentive.

if you've seen the videos, they demonstrate....this was an extreme expression of the most brutal type of religious fundamentalism. i don't agree with islam's basic rules, but this was a step beyond. this made 7th century islam look moderate in comparison.

we didn't pause and ask whether isis deserved some level of mercy, we just finished them off, and we had to do that. we had to kill the women. we had to kill the children. the ideology is too perverse, too barbaric.

there's a broad disconnect between the propaganda coming from sources like al jazeera and how they want to frame the situation and the actual reality on the ground. this is an ideology that needs to be exterminated.

i don't generally find myself in agreement with netanyahu, but he's doing the world a favour in being a stubborn old fucking prick about this. it happens sometimes that the fucking rigid old men get it right.

the liberals should really flip the issue over on the conservatives and start running ads against them that accuse them of wanting to take away the carbon rebate.

i want this to be a reality check.

i'm a low income canadian; i live on odsp, and while i wish i sold more of my art, my sole source of actual income is a $1300/month odsp check.

every four months, i get a $100+ check as a carbon rebate. last year it was $122. it should be ~$20 more than that this year. i don't have a car (i couldn't afford one, but i actually don't want one), and i'm smart enough to know that the inflation we're experiencing is not substantively due to the carbon tax.

those $100+ checks have actually dramatically improved my quality of life and have actually helped me deal with inflation. $500-600/year is very helpful when your income is very low.

now, we can debate whether this policy is actually effective, and i would actually argue it hasn't been and won't be. that's not the point right now.

right now, we're dealing with a demagogue in parliament trying to argue that the carbon tax is harming low-income canadians, and the reality check needs to be that the exact opposite is true, that this $500/yr top-up on my disability is actually exceedingly helpful to me and that i'm actually overwhelmingly in favour of increasing the carbon tax as much as possible.

now, i understand that this might be bothersome to middle-income canadians that make enough money that they can spend a lot on gas, but that's the point. the policy is intended to penalize polluters and incentivize them to change. what the demagogue is demonstrating is that the policy isn't working; it is exactly those middle-income canadians that most need to change that are organizing to resist it and polls suggest, at the moment, that they would have a good chance of winning.

however, the policy is in truth very beneficial to actual low-income canadians, who generally don't have cars because they can't actually afford it. don't listen to this guy try to tell you otherwise.

the liberals think they lost the last two elections because they were too left wing, which is a false analysis. i'm actually skeptical of the election results; i think there was massive fraud. yet, to the extent that the conservatives did swing some votes in the last two elections, it had to do with (1) doug ford being popular amongst immigrant communities because immigrant voters tend to like aggressive male politicians, which is the antithesis of the liberal party at almost every level of government and (2) the liberals not being left-wing enough, and bleeding both working class and over-educated voters to the ndp, who offered a more convincing left of centre vision.

i think this is all very frustrating because i actually supported the mcguinty-wynne government as they passed a lot of very good bills. i have not supported the trudeau government because they keep passing horrible legislation. yet, the quality of legislation being debated is not a primary election issue for a large percentage of voters.

i couldn't vote for the last guy; i thought he was awful, and he didn't even win his seat, which is something i predicted the day he was elected leader of the party.  mimicking stephen harper is not going to win the liberal party of ontario any votes.

the liberals are going to have to acknowledge that the demographic changes in ontario over the last 20 years have placed them as the least favoured party amongst a large plurality of new voters who want charismatic and dominant male leaders and are going to have to adjust to that. bonnie crombie's angle is that she can dominate the ndp and the liberals are going to have to understand that they are fighting an election against the left, where there are voters they can swing, and not against the populist middle, which is currently out of their reach.

the rule in the west is that the kids of the immigrants conform, and the liberals may have better luck with second-generation canadians than first-generation canadians, as soon as they exist and can vote. however, they type of migrants moving to canada in recent decades is dramatically different than the type that came here decades ago, and that might be a false projection. we'll have to see.

for right now, the liberals need to be focused on trying to swing new democrats and if they don't realize that then they're going to get squeezed and scrunched and may in the end just end up merging with the conservatives.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/provincial/ontario-liberals-propose-tax-credit-for-childrens-sports-after-school-activities/article_1746162a-e640-11ee-9044-ef20edb861c2.html

there is an utterly pathetic woman at 1227 curry in windsor that is obsessed with me because she thinks i'm a "hot guy" and is drugging me because she wants to have sex with me. she's a delusional idiot; i'm a transgendered woman with no interest in using my penis with women or with men. i am getting srs done soon.

in fact, i'm extremely likely to beat the shit out of her if she doesn't leave very soon. i am not attracted to women, and all the drugs she is giving me are doing is making me angry and making me want to react violently.

i've tried everything and she won't stop, but she's going to get killed before she gets laid.

if you are also a pathetic loser that needs a girlfriend, please come and fuck her. she needs it. she's obsessive, she'll love you. then take her away from here.

i want to call on hamas to release all hostages immediately, or take full responsibility for what happens.

as the overwhelmingly superior military (beyond any question), israel had no choice but to annihilate them for their insolence when they decided to take hostages and demanded terms. this was utter stupidity by utterly stupid people. hamas is an inferior actor and they need to learn and accept their place.

they have a few days left to release the hostages before they're wiped off the planet, which is the correct outcome if they refuse to.

i'm still struggling with securing my network, and the long promised complete overhaul of this site is imminent, but i want to stop for a second to talk about this "online harms" bill, as i would be a potential primary target of the government.

there's been some expected analysis from your typical free-speech conservatives, like margaret atwood (who americans don't seem to understand is a right-winger in canada) who are mostly concerned that the government is trying to attack christians, which is largely paranoid nonsense that comes through a conservative party propaganda filter. the idea that speech restriction laws are an attack on christians is something that right-wing politicians promote in order to raise money from their base. there's absolutely no empirical basis for the claim, no history of the government attacking christians and no evidence that this is what trudeau cares about doing. in fact, trudeau is the most pro-religion liberal prime minister since the 1800s and has a distinctly social conservative streak. unlike his father, he's been vocal about his belief in "religious rights". on this issue, he sounds more like his father's opponents than he does like his father.

in response, the government has tried to suggest that the law will be moderate and the judges will react proportionally. if the response is alarmist because it promotes potential for abuse, and perhaps it is, and it certainly does, the government is trying to calm people down by essentially arguing that the judges won't actually enforce the law anyways, and there consequently isn't anything to worry about.

i'm concerned about the nature of the discourse, because this is in fact a scary law and it does in fact threaten to infringe on your rights and freedoms but the narrative being framed - that it's an attack on christianity, and christians don't need to worry - has no basis in reality and threatens to merely obfuscate the issue. in fact, most people would be perfectly happy to pass laws telling christians to shut up and fuck off because most people despise christians and are annoyed by the constant attempts of christians to interfere in their personal decisions. this framing is likely to generate support for the law, not opposition to it. this issue needs to be reclaimed by real liberals and actual speech activists and reframed in terms of actually real and actually realistic concerns. 

anybody living in reality should be able to instantly see that this law, which is being written and advanced by a muslim, is intended primarily to "protect" muslims from criticism. this isn't an attack on christianity, it's the first step in a back door imposition of sharia law.

the reality is that i detest islam. i detest islamic values, i detest islamic beliefs, i detest islamic behaviours and i detest islamic culture. i don't like them, i don't like what they believe and i don't like how they act. what is the government trying to tell me in passing this law, ordering me that i'm not allowed to detest somebody?

am i supposed to just pretend that i like them?

am i supposed to just be quiet, as more and more of these sorts of law pass, and my rights and freedoms are slowly chipped away at?

i'm going to be naive. i'm going to pretend that there isn't some plan here, and that this isn't the start of the islamic colonization of canada. remember: muslims are not a victim of colonization, muslims invented colonialism. islam is a racist colonial system of hierarchical dominance and violent control, which is exactly what our leaders in the west wish they had. 

when somebody tells you they detest and dislike you, it seems to me that you have two potential reactions. you might decide you don't care, which is what i would do; if somebody told me they detested me, i'd tell them to fuck off and go kill themselves. the other choice is that you might decide that you do care, listen to the reasons you're detested and try to change yourself so that you're no longer detested. the reasons that islam is detested by some, including myself, are absolutely valid. islam is a horrible system of thought and it needs to drastically alter itself to avoid being detested.

ordering me not to detest you is just providing evidence as to why i detest you in the first place.

i expect in the end that the courts will uphold my right to detest people, but the bill needs to be challenged, and not by the christian right and not via the framing of their delusions of oppression. let's understand what the bill actually is and challenge it's actual goals on actual face value. if we let margaret atwood and jordan peterson do this, we're going to lose.

atwood has repeatedly rejected and denounced any interpretation of the handmaid's tale that attempts to tie it to an attempt at islamic colonization of america, despite it being an obvious satire of the iranian revolution. i'm not sure if she's commented on that point, but what the novel is is an attempt to imagine what would happen if an iranian revolution happened in the united states, which was not a crazy idea in the early 1980s, in the context of the rise of the moral majority and the political dominance of reaganism. the parallels are too heavy-handed; it's not debatable. she doesn't like these comparisons, though, and insists it's strictly a canadian fantasy, from an evolved loyalist perspective. ok.

but, she's missing the point of her own text, because she's old. i semi-recently saw a debate between chomsky and right-wing israeli, where he utterly failed to draw the connection to manufacturing consent, because he's been half there for 20 years, and might only be a quarter there nowadays.

hitchens died too young, and it was his own fucking fault, but this speech should be the starting point in opposing the online harms bill, as he nails it fifteen years before it happened.

here's a distraction we can all appreciate:

it seems like sean is reforming rabit is wolf, and is trying to steal my studio and take credit for my music in the process. what a pathetic loser.

as stated repeatedly over many fora, sean's contribution to my discography is strictly limited to a handful of guest vocal tracks on a small number of demos. sean barely deserves co-writing credits for even the rabit is wolf material, and had no influence at all on the inri material or the trivial group material. sean did not write or perform a single section on a single instrument, and in fact doesn't know how to play any instrument. in fact, he can't even sing; he's horribly tone deaf, which is why i auto-tuned and pitch-shifted and digitally altered his vocals and then ran them through effects. he couldn't hit a middle c if you put a gun to his head.

sean is very good at video games, but he's not good at music. he's simply not a musician.

jon wanted sean to sing because he thought he looked like a singer, but then he bailed and left me to deal with him. we did a few demos and went our separate ways. i finished the material years later by myself (and i wrote it and performed it by myself). this is consequently really jon's fault. i wouldn't have these demos with sean singing on them, otherwise.

as it is, those demos are currently not streaming at my bandcamp site and i may have to take them down altogether. nor am i going to give sean permission to host music with me performing on it, if he's going to act like he's acting. right now, it looks like the demos are going to get permanently unpublished and the finished instrumental versions will be the only thing available; right now, it seems like sean is just going to get completely canceled, and that i'm going to remove all references to him altogether.

i would consequently invite sean to consider covering the following foofighters track as the first new rabit is wolf song.

ugh.

things are changing.

i'm working on it.