i would not have endorsed biden anyways. i would suggest taking a very serious look at jill stein.

however, trump really destroyed biden on foreign policy, and that's not a comment about biden's age. as a canadian that cannot vote in the american elections, my primary concern is american foreign policy. trump was clearly the better candidate on that specific issue, in terms of specific polices and ideas. the primary reason i did not endorse biden in 2020 was that i worried his foreign policy would be a disaster, and i was correct. he is going to start world war three, if he hasn't already.

however, trump is awful on immigration (i say that as i realize that biden has been more vicious than trump was, despite what trump said) and awful on climate change. the united states does not have the kind of infrastructure problems that canada has. i actually think a partial solution to canada's housing crisis could be the united states accepting a substantial percentage of the refugees that have come here, as they have the infrastructure and we don't.

i don't care about the deficit in principle, as it is a meaningless abstraction. yet, massive tax cuts are not a good idea right now, as the country needs investment in public infrastructure.

i did watch the american presidential debate.

biden certainly looked awful, but i want to remind people that he wasn't that different 20 years ago. even then he frequently trailed off. i actually think this is a tactic to stop talking when he doesn't want to talk. it's a bad tactic, but he's been doing it so long that it appears to be intentional. i think he needs a new tactic, but i'd be hesitant to present it as evidence of cognitive decline, because he's always done that. he'd better stop, because if it didn't make him look senile then, it does now.

he frequently stumbled over words, but he has frequently publicized that he has a stutter.

yes, he looked and sounded awful, but that's what joe biden is normally like. i didn't see anything that suggested to me that he's lost control, even if there were moments that suggested he might not have much time left. my analysis would be that joe is still with us, but that he might not be in four years.

i have a different suggestion: the debate was at 21:00. that was probably past joe's bedtime. he was probably very sleepy.

i might advise that biden's team try to schedule debates earlier in the day, when the president can stay awake.

the supreme court of canada has already ruled that you can't criminalize suicide in this country. the website is clearly protected as free speech and via the right to bodily autonomy by canadian constitutional law, meaning the website has a clear constitutional right to exist. i would hope that the canadian civil liberties union is taking up the case.

the government should withdraw this obviously unconstitutional legislation before the court stikes it down and the crown should withdraw these unconstitutional charges before the court throws them out. this website is and should be entirely legal in this country.

“It just can’t be that easy,” Cohn, 38, told CTV News Toronto in an interview in March. “All he had to do was go to one website, and it was so easy to access.”

this is a completely backwards moral position. yes, it should be that easy, and the state has no right to restrict the individual, who has complete autonomy over their decision to live or die, from accessing the tools to harm themselves.

it must be that easy, under canadian law, and any attempt to make it harder is unconstitutional, due to s. 7 of the canadian constitution. in canada, we have the right to complete self-ownership. it should be that way in america, too - and i hope that it is, one day.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/don-t-care-says-pro-suicide-website-linked-to-kenneth-law-of-canada-s-online-harms-act-1.6942666

death threats over gender politics seems rather irrational.

however, when a transfemale shows up at a battered woman's shelter looking for help, it seems to me that it is beyond the need to explain that she is in dire need of assistance and it would consequently seem to me that an empathetic person, female or not, would and ought to be concerned about helping that person avoid being the victim of further or greater violence, rather than trying to figure out if they have a penis or not. the latter point doesn't strike me as very important.

i don't think that transgendered people want to be the focus of this kind of politics. this is petty and stupid.

perhaps rosie should start her own party, and call it the Blonde Party, where she can cry if she wants to, cry if she wants to.

after all.

you would cry too.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyxx243yr16o

seems as though jamaal bowman (a fake leftist (former) american congressman) is casualty #2 for the political mistake of sympathizing with hamas terrorists in public.

the bourgeois left may take a few more casualties to get the point, unfortunately. the oil-funded pro-arab lobby and the pro-muslim media are both very powerful in the west nowadays, but they only represent a fringe viewpoint that is out of touch with voters on the ground. i've been trying to get that point across, and a little bit of empirical evidence in the form of two "surprise upsets", one due to jews staying home (in toronto) and the other due to jews turning against an incumbent in a primary (in new york) is helpful to get the point across.

while i oppose conscription in most scenarios, israel is a special case; if a country is to have conscription, it should be applied to everybody equally. in principle. so, the israeli court ruling that orthodox jews are to be conscripted is the correct one.

however, i would suspect the idf would find itself extremely disappointed in the quality of orthodox conscripts, which is what happened in vietnam, and the reason the united states abandoned conscription.

i also want to point out that biden's team should look at these results closely, as well, as i've been pointing out for months that his politically-driven attempt to interfere in and police the conflict is going to badly backfire, as he is going to lose 10x as many votes for abandoning the jews in their fight against fascism as he would gain for siding with a terrorist group, due to some kind of feeling that they're being treated unfairly.

i'm not one to get preachy about morality, but the moral position here is abundantly clear, and it is siding with the israelis in their struggle against fascism. most people have very little difficulty figuring that out and realize very intuitively and very quickly that there is something very rotten about somebody that can't figure it out.

i would hope that the liberal party apparatchiks have a better analysis than this.

recent conservative results in the riding v liberal results:

2024: 15555 v 14965

2021: 13587 v 26429

2019: 12933 v 32494

2015: 15936 v 31481

2011: 17864 v 22409

2008: 13948 v 26286

2006: 15021 v 29295

2004: 11226 v 32171

before 2004, there were two right wing parties in canada and you have to add the two totals, but that should be done with some apprehension because a substantive number of red tories in ridings like this one would have become liberals after 2004. i'm going to do it anyways, with a caveat. it's also worth pointing out that the liberal swing to the right after martin lost them some votes to the ndp for a while, although they came back after the ndp committed suicide by electing tom mulcair.

2000: (10099+5457=15556) v 25358

1997: (11520+3564 = 15084) v 26389

1993: (12499 + 5727 = 18266) v 27775

in 1988, there was only one conservative party in ontario, and it won the riding, but the liberals still got over 20,000 votes in a riding with a much smaller population. it should be pointed out that 1984 and 1988 were massive landslides for the conservatives in canada and 1984 was a very bad year for liberals.

1988: 25206 v 21655

1984: 20914 v 16659

the liberals won in 1980 but, due to population growth, citing raw numbers is no longer helpful.

the claim in the article that her vote total of 14965 would usually be enough to win is pretty dubious. the average conservative turnout since 1993, not including yesterday, in actual real elections, was:

(13587 + 12933 + 15936 + 17864 + 13948 + 15021 + 11226 + 15556 + 15084 + 18266)/10 = 14942.

this is supposed to be a liberal stronghold, so winning by 20 votes is not "enough to win". indeed, the average liberal turnout over the same time period was:

(26429 + 32494 + 31481 + 22409 + 26286 + 29295 + 32171 + 25358 + 26389 + 27775)/10 = 28008.

don stewart's total was about the average turnout since 1993, give or take a reasonable margin. conversely, leslie church's total was roughly half of the average turnout since 1993, and over 10,000 votes less than any other liberal candidate since 1993.

it is abundantly clear that liberal voters decided not to vote in the byelection and i hope the liberals figure that out and adjust to allow for more democracy. leslie church has claimed she doesn't want to give up. this is not helpful, she should get the message and move on, or at least stand back and have an open nomination that lets the people in the riding choose their representatives.

i'm not a liberal, i'm a libertarian socialist. the bourgeois positions of the soft capitalist class constantly frustrate and annoy me. i'd rather vote ndp, but they're a bunch of phonies; every time the ndp actually gets elected, it results in budget cuts at the provincial level. the ndp can say what they want, but their record is clear: ndp governments are austerity governments, always. even olivia chow is pushing through austerity as the mayor of toronto. they're complete frauds, and i say that as a hard leftist.

it is because i am a hard leftist that i won't have anything to do with fascistic right-wing organization like hamas, and would utterly consternate anybody identifying as a leftist that expresses any remote level of sympathy for any level of arabic supremacist islamic fascism. that position is untenable. netanyahu is unquestionably the lesser evil.

as terrible as they are, the liberals are by far the least terrible party, and the conservatives are by far the most terrible party. they need to learn the actual lesson here, which is that there's a lack of democracy in this country, and that they need to increase grassroots participation. as a bourgeois party, the liberals have a longstanding problem understanding this, and it costs them elections every ten-fifteen years as a result of it. the conservatives are far better at getting grassroots voters involved, even as they constantly turn on them after they get elected.

canadians won't like pierre polievre and will dispose of him relatively quickly, if he accidentally wins. the liberal party should not let that happen by making the mistake of continuing to enforce candidates on voters.

and leslie church should absolutely move on.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/veteran-liberal-toronto-st-pauls

the results in the toronto byelection this morning are certainly notable. a parade of pollsters are going to react by claiming the liberals are headed for a massive defeat, and trudeau should resign.

i've been calling on trudeau to resign for years, but my analysis of the situation is rather different. i do have a math degree, and i have worked in polling. i tend to provide alternate analyses of the mainstream polling media.

if you look at the raw numbers, the conservatives were actually relatively flat, but the liberal numbers completely caved in. turnout was down 20%. these two things, together, indicate that what happened was more along the lines of that the liberals couldn't get their vote out rather than that there was some kind of massive swing right.

this is certainly cause for alarm, if you're a liberal (and i'm not), but there are a lot of reasonable explanations. it was game 7 in the stanley cup finals and with a canadian team, and perhaps the conservative base was a little more devoted to their cause than the liberal base. there were some concerns about trudeau's hamas sympathizing messaging (including repeating hamas blood libel propaganda, probably from facebook) in a very jewish riding, and that may have kept a lot of voters home. it's also worth pointing out that the liberal candidate was parachuted in, and replaced somebody with deep ties in the community, who was also rather clearly pushed out to make way for one of trudeau's friends. trudeau and his parachuted-in candidate may have been punished for kicking a popular elder out and replacing her with a backroom party operative that nobody knew anything about.

the liberals are certainly in trouble, but the national polling in canada is very difficult to distribute correctly, which is a point i've tried to help with and had some impressive results with. the liberals could conceivably win a majority and lose the popular vote. for that reason, they shouldn't freak out too much from bad national polling. yet, that is why this byelection was supposed to be helpful. unfortunately, the actual reality is that the byelection has too many anomalies to expect it to be representative, and i would advise avoiding using it to predict much of anything.

the lesson the liberals should learn is to stop parachuting in these backroom party hacks like this. the candidate lost because she was unknown in the riding and rejected by the voters for it. an mp's job is to represent their constituents. if they allow for a nomination in the riding, they should probably win the seat back in the general next year.

they pulled the heritage minute on louis riel, because it was "violent" and "scaring children". right. the obvious truth is that it isn't something the state wants indigenous people, or anybody else, thinking too much about, but rather something it wants to sweep under the rug of history and forget ever happened. it's not the end part that the state wants to forget, it's the part about revolting against the crown.

nonetheless, there's an easy way to get kids more involved, and that is to play music that they like.

the democrats are running on abortion.

hillary clinton once supported a constitutional amendment to restrict abortion rights. i don't think she ever reversed herself on that, either.

but, the democrats are running on abortion.

joe biden's response to the end of abortion rights, as president, was to tell people they should elect somebody that would stand up for their rights, and legislate abortion rights. not him, though, apparently. in fact, he nominated anti-abortion judges.

but, the democrats are running on abortion. they'll get lots of votes, too. so, why would they change anything, if they're getting lots of votes? it's a perennial vote driver.

there are lots of issues where the democrats have a history of being confusing or breaking promises, and this is one of the worst. if abortion is your ballot issue, be careful who you're voting for. you might not get what you're expecting.

the alberta ndp party is very small. according to the cbc article, it had 16,000 members a few months ago; that made it very easy for naheed nenshi to crash the party and buy his way into power. he received over 60,000 votes, which was a commanding win of 86%. 

yet, 63000/x = 0.86  <----> x = 63000/.86 = 73000. 

73000-63000 = 10000.

16000 - 10000 = 6000.

6000/16000 = 0.37.

 that also suggests he only got around 35-40% of historical ndp voters, and he brought the rest in.

then, is nenshi a viable candidate? yes, he is. but, he's a conservative.

this is essentially the same thing that jagmeet singh did and i would expect more or less the same outcome. on some level, nenshi may be viable, but traditional ndp voters are going to like him less than anybody else in the province and leftists don't have a lot of brand loyalty to parties that abandon their mandates. nenshi will appeal more to alienated progressive conservative voters than to ndp voters, but the trick is that there's 3x as many pc voters in alberta than ndp voters so that might actually work.

i would expect nenshi to destroy the party in the long run, even if he manages to win a term or two. you're not going to recognize the party when nenshi is done with it.

this depicts what people from the eastern mediterranean coast looked like c. 250 ce.

they're pretty white - partly from roman, greek, armenian and iranian migration, but there's not a lot of reason to think the migration patterns in the region were substantively different 1000 years previously. the migration patterns did change dramatically after the end of the last roman-persian war, when the region was depopulated, c. 650 ce.

jesus probably actually looked relatively similar to this guy:

something else that should be pointed out before i stop for the night, and this will upset people but it is true, is that the post-exile or post-captivity jews that "returned" to israel from babylon, and brought this religion that was heavily influenced by iranian zoroastrianism with them, probably interbred heavily with their iranian overlords and probably looked a whole lot more like modern russians or poles than they did like modern arabs, who have a substantive amount of subsaharan dna as a consequence of the arab slave trade. roman propaganda tells us that the ancient canaanites were darker skinned than they were, but it is extremely unlikely that they were as remotely as dark skinned as arabs are today. when the jews left israel after the roman exile and settled around the world, they were likely not very different looking than other southern european groups, meaning that this idea that they lightened their skin in europe is actually a mistake; rather, the jews that stayed in the south probably grew darker over time, due to the influx of dna from africa that occurred as a result of the arab slave trade.

if you're serious about decolonization as a concept, rather than a buzzword, you should fully comprehend that dearabization and deislamicization need to be placed at the conceptual core of decolonization, and the means everywhere where arabs and islam acted as a colonizing force; it means in both north and subsaharan africa, in the middle east, in eastern europe, in india, in iran, in central asia and in south-east asia. arabs are only indigenous to the south of the arabian peninsula, the area near yemen, and islam is only an indigenous religion in the deserts of arabia. it is a colonizing, imperializing force everywhere else in the world. 

if you don't include dearabization and deislamicization in your concept of decolonization, you are not serious about decolonization, you are just using the language to enforce and implement some other ideology, like arab supremacism, like anti-semitism or like islam itself.

in israel, what decolonization means in an actually coherent sense is dearabizing the genetically hebrew indigenous population, as it is arabs that colonized the region in the name of islam and that is what needs to be undone to decolonize it. palestinians are jews that were colonized by arabs and converted to islam, and they know it. that is what the truth actually is.

further, if you are a jew, you should realize you will attract more flies with honey than with vinegar, even if that looks difficult now. your grandchildren will thank you for making the effort.

there's another article here:

https://www.jpost.com/magazine/features/the-lost-palestinian-jews

as it turns out, ben gurion actually realized that the palestinians were descended from jews and proposed converting them, but the idea was abandoned. the science since his time has merely proven he was right. i think his ideas, which he left to us in his writings, should be revisited.

it's the only way to actual, real peace - not a hobson's choice peace, not "peace" at the end of a gun, but actual integration.

this is the only solution to the demographic problem.

i don't think force is required. contrary to popular myth and recent pseudo-science, cultural identity is not something inborn or inherent to the individual but a consequence of hegemonic conditioning. people tend to very happily convert by free choice, if conversion provides them with opportunity.

the reality is that the palestinians in the west bank are almost entirely hebrews with jewish roots that converted to islam because converting to islam gave them economic advantages. the israeli state should ensure that converting back to judaism is beneficial to the population in the west bank, and watch them do so, without needing to put a gun in their back.

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/most-palestinians-are-descendants-of-jews/

this was at one point fringe, and then controversial, but it is now uncontroversial at all.

it has been thoroughly established using genetics that the palestinians are basically entirely hebrew in their ancestry.

https://www.shavei.org/blog/2016/06/05/palestinians-jewish-roots/

i was under the impression that his father celebrated festivus.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/ben-stiller-speaks-out-israel-hamas-war-need-peace-1235929874/

i watched an interview with jeremy corbyn and his butt buddy the other day (i think it was piers morgan) where, in response to piers pushing back on the idea of genocide in gaza, corbyn and his bud kept bringing up the situation in the west bank. they refused to discuss the situation in gaza at all, in their claims of israeli genocide, which is actually reflective of a level of dishonesty, as it indicates they knew their argument wasn't sound.

i've pointed this out myself a few times: there is a much better case for genocide in the west bank, which is a territory that israel absolutely wants, than there is in gaza, which the israeli fundamentalists don't consider a part of historical israel due it's status as being inhabited by philistines (a greek ethnic group that gave it's name to palestine, after the relatively successful roman attempt at genocide after a series of jewish revolts in the 2nd century, but which i have repeatedly pointed out that i think is an ethnic conflict dating to the punic wars) rather than jews. yes, that's crazy. it's also true. they would be more interested in annexing lebanon (which i learned recently is actually a hebrew word) than gaza. i mean, they withdrew from gaza, as they were settling the west bank.

this is very relevant information to understand how the israeli right views the situation:

as i pointed out a few days ago, israel has a convoluted but somewhat convincing legitimate historical claim to most of lebanon, but syria (and damascus) represents a very ancient border that was never settled by canaanites or other hebrew-speaking people but is rather the far edge of the iraqi mesopotamian crescent. the philistines are in the red area, but israeli fundamentalists consider the region foreign territory.

the west bank is, to these people, firmly a part of israel, and if you understand the history, it's actually very hard to argue with them. when the un created israel in 1948, it couldn't just ignore the fact that the population of the region was almost entirely arab and muslim, and it had been that way since (a) the crusaders were expelled and left and (b) the region was "arabized" under the process of islamic colonization, and the hebrews were converted from jews (and christians, the latter conversion having had already largely happened first) into muslims. certainly, the existing inhabitants of the region deserve some kind of compensation if the state is going to seize their land (as we would do in the west, and if israel wants to be a part of the west), but the west bank should be a part of israel, if there's to be any israel at all, and even if it means resettling the existing inhabitants in a fair and just way, such as financially compensating and resettling then in jordan, syria or egypt, giving them the opportunity to stay and convert (back) to judaism or even just letting them stay and be peaceful and get along, if they can. my actual criticism of israel is more directed at it's racist land ownership laws, and persistent attempts to enforce segregation. i support a single secular israeli state where everyone is equal under the law, regardless of race, religion, language or ethnicity (and you will note that, in the case of hebrew jews v. hebrew muslims, these differences are difficult to actually even define).

the point of this post is to ask people to look at the evidence before they knee jerk around what is likely an upcoming policy change in israel regarding the west bank. the media is painting this jewish minister smotrich as some kind of crazy person, and insisting we return not to oslo and clinton but all the way back to camp david and carter, while the reality on the ground is that you can't even call the west bank swiss cheese, anymore. what's left of palestinian settlement in the west bank is better described as a handful of low income ghettoes, and you can't build a country out of that. smotrich is reacting to reality. by insisting on two states and returning to oslo or camp david, you're the one that's out of touch and crazy.

if this outcome really upsets you so much, you should have reacted some time around oslo. it's too late now.

the discussion needs to be about finding ways to get equal rights for palestinians inside israel and in finding ways to get just financial settlements to the ones that leave, not in finding ways to have two states, and those holding to that idea are out of touch with reality. this upcoming change in policy is a foregone conclusion and a formality to acknowledge something that already happened over ten years ago.

immigration and housing, and how immigration has affected housing, is going to be a major issue in the next canadian election. unfortunately, we are going to be presented with the choice between being pro-immigrant (and voting to worsen the status quo) or being anti-immigrant (and also voting to worsen the status quo), when the issue is really not about immigration, but about the inevitable consequences of embracing neo-liberalism.

i randomly watched this video on youtube last night, for no good reason other than that it was in the sidebar:

is canada in a similar situation to china in the 1980s? not yet, but it is moving in that direction. what i want to draw attention to is not a comparison of china and canada but a discussion of what china did to reverse it's housing deficit into a housing supply.

we are going to need to do something similar in canada, or we will end up in the same situation as china.

increasing or decreasing immigration does not address the issue at hand, and these are subtle economic arguments that are more stochastic than causal. i mean, you can make a great argument for one approach or the other, and then something like covid happens, and everything you said becomes meaningless. increasing immigration even further might be good for the economy if a bunch of random stuff happens, or decreasing immigration might be better if a bunch of other random stuff happens, instead. you're not getting anywhere trying to make predictions when you don't have laboratory conditions. our smartest brains have utterly failed to turn economics into a science, and the people we elect to run our parliaments are very far from our smartest brains.

it's going to be very hard to break through this broken dichotomy.

but we need to strenuously avoid the temptation to politicize this and make about immigration policy. yes, immigration is putting strains on our housing, but we have 40 million people in a giant, vast land. we should be underpopulated. dramatically. yet, we've somehow overpopulated ourselves by making bad resource allocation decisions and very poor land use planning.

we need to find a way to build, build, build, build and not be distracted by the politics of migration or immigration, even as we should be apprehensive about letting too many social conservatives into the country, lest we wake up in iran, or texas.

most conflicts in world history are about concrete financial or resource concerns that can be negotiated and do not require violence to resolve. the israel-iran conflict is not like that, it is one of a much smaller number of conflicts that is about ideology, religion and race and has to actually be fought and one side has to lose and be conquered and be vanquished from history. israel doesn't have a choice but to try to minimize hezbollah's ability to strike, any way it can.

but, declaring "total war" against lebanon is not a good strategy.

israel needs to do the following:

1) build allies in lebanon with christian groups and maybe even try to reach out to the kurds, assyrians, armenians and other minorities in the middle east

2) try to push hezbollah out of power democratically

3) continue to sabotage hezbollah as much as possible

4) increase cross-border strikes to take out weapons depots and leaders as much as possible

it does not want a conventional war involving ground troops and it does not want to try to occupy lebanon without identifying a strong ally on the ground, first.

israel has to retaliate for the crazy missile strike from iran, and the way to do that is absolutely to dismantle hezbollah, but it has to be smart about it.

if israel were thinking this through properly, it would actually be prioritizing the distribution of aid with israeli flags on it. a primary objective of this conflict should be to ensure that every kid in gaza sees the israeli flag every time it eats and to completely sever the population's reliance on hamas to feeding it.

another option is for israel to actually distribute the food itself, or for the americans to do it itself. hamas is not going to infiltrate the marines the way it can infiltrate the un, and it will suffer the consequences if it blows up any green berets.

the importance of this cannot be underestimated. they have to get to the kids, and they need to feed the people by weaponizing food distribution as a propaganda tool. the israelis are being foolish in not realizing the importance of this and the americans need to be doing everything they can to prevent hamas from weaponizing the aid delivery, instead. this is foundational and imperative, if they want to build a lasting, generational peace.

and, they need to understand that this entire process kicks the idea of statehood down the road by several decades. this is no longer a serious idea and it can't be until the population is deradicalized.

yeah.

this isn't a bandcamp email. yet. i signed up for songtadr a couple of years ago to explore options, but didn't upload anything because i didn't like the terms.

expect a similar email from bandcamp soon. i will not be paying for bandcamp access.

conversely, i would like to get back to building my own site at inrirecords.bandcamp.com, but i cannot stay online for more than a few minutes at a time without getting hacked by the losers that are stalking me.

i may actually have to temporarily take everything offline. so, buy it now if you want it.

the united states air force has in fact been air dropping for a few months.

that's a better tactic than shipping in trucks. chretien though he heard drugs. i thought i heard guns.

they should continue and expand this approach.

https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/1057026/DHAD%20Manuscript%20%28E%20Wood%29%20Final%20Copy%20as%20published%2010-4-2019.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

has anybody thought about air-dropping food and supplies into gaza?

i'm a realist and i know that if you're a "civilian" in gaza in 2024, after nearly 20 years of hamas dictatorship, chances are high that you're at least sympathetic to the regime. this idea that there's millions of defenseless civilians being abused is not reality. nor should we single out the women as vulnerable in the 21st century.

however, there are kids. there's lots of kids because the psychotic government lets men rape their wives, criminalizes abortion and restricts access to birth control, and then encourages large families, despite the horrible living conditions. getting the birth rate down in gaza should be an international priority. in the mean time, you need to feed the kids, who are the most vulnerable victims of the regime, even if you don't sympathize with the idea that the adults are truly civilians.

there is no way to create a centralized distribution center that will not be taken over by hamas and weaponized. so, the tactic should be to decentralize aid.

i'm not a military engineer, and they would have better ways to decentralize aid, once the situation is clearly stated to them. air-dropping it seems like an obvious solution.

after the oct 7 terrorist attack, israel cannot allow hezbollah to sit on it's border and threaten it's safety.

war is inevitable and something israel has to do. further, they will need help, and the west should be coming to their aid.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/17/us-envoy-due-in-israel-to-avert-wider-escalation-of-conflict-with-lebanon-amos-hochstein

when i was very little, my favourite movie was ghostbusters. i was very young, but i was smart enough to know who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. 

(i also realized that the hard g in 'gh' is unusual, and that the gh combination is usually vocalized as a silent g in the english language. while i know of no example of a hard gh in english that is not followed by a vowel, there are examples of a soft gh that are followed by a vowel (laughingstock), and the general consensus is that there is a rule of thumb but not a general rule and you have to learn each word and remember it. the rule of thumb is that gh + vowel is usually hard but i did not know that, i thought gh was always soft, and as such i mispronounced the word, and defended my argument when challenged.)

then i tried to talk to the other kids about the movie and i found out that all they wanted to talk about were the ghosts, as though the ghosts were the protagonists in the film. i even recall somebody telling me that egon was a loser and slimer was the coolest.

that's exactly when i first knew that i was going to have a rough life in this world and that the other humans on this planet were going to be a fucking problem.

elon.

if you make robots look like humans, people will want to treat them like humans, and people will want them to act like humans. if robots act and look and behave like humans, we'll have to give them rights.

we don't want to give robots rights. it defeats the point.

robots consequently should not look like humans, even if they are dumb pieces of steel. robots could perhaps look like dogs or horses. i'd rather they be designed for maximum utility and look like conveyor belts.

this is important. if you're the one doing this, then how you design them will determine whether we can use these things to work for us or not. if we turn them into steel humans and give them rights, we're ending the possibility that we can use these things to emancipate us from tedious labour, which is supposed to be the point.

i don't want smart robots or robots that can think or feel to exist. i want robots to remain stupid, brute slaves with no ability to understand what's outside of the cave. we need slaves to have a civilization, and robots are the only humane way to do that. don't ruin it by giving them sentience.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/13/elon-musk-says-optimus-robots-could-make-tesla-25-trillion-company-.html

a proper treatment of the topic would require a lot more detail than i can present here right this minute, but post-captivity judaism is very obviously an iranian sky god religion that is dominantly influenced by zoroastrianism, whereas the archaeology makes it abundantly clear that the people that lived in the southern levant before the assyrian destruction event were phoenician pagans that worshipped gods like baal and tanit.

it follows that judaism (and it's christian and muslim offshoots) is an introduced indo-european religion and not an ancient semitic religion and that the fact that these resettled jews were basically persians had a lot to do with their preferential treatment in the persian empire, beyond the persian's general phil-phoenicianism, which stemmed from the persian culture's inability to build ships or engage in maritime trade, or naval warfare. the persians needed the phoenicians to fight the greeks.

what that means is that you just can't separate the jews from the lebs until cyrus and persia show up, which is really pretty late in the region's history. if your historical references to israel are from the mythical david and solomon era (of which there is no empirical support for...), then lebanon does in fact become a part of greater "hebrewistan".

but this is crazy.

what is more important is the fact that 40% of lebanon is christian, and they are facing the threat of severe persecution under fundamentalist iranian hegemony. they have worked with israel in past civil wars. they are natural allies in any serious war with hezbollah, and will likely be decisive allies. the question of political union between lebanon and israel based on the consent of the governed is realistic, and doesn't require talking about conquering lebanon, or asking who built tyre and sidon or whatever.

do the jews have any historical claim to lebanon?

the short answer is "not exactly". but, i have a more subtle answer.

with the current nonsense on the fake left about arabs being victims of colonialism, it's easy to forget that the arabs actually invented colonialism as we understand it today, and that it (along with chattel slavery of africans based not on their status as black but rather due to them being non-muslims) was copied by the spaniards, with the blessing of the pope, via the dum diversas. colonialism as we understand it today is not something that was invented by white people to oppress brown people, but was something that was invented by arabs to oppress non-muslims. the cultural interchange between crazy christians and crazy muslims was complex; jihad was actually invented by a christian emperor named heraclius, and used to reconquer jerusalem from the persians, before it turned into the idea of the crusades, and was copied by the arabs during the apocalyptic period that followed the last roman-persian war, which was catastrophic for both sides. however, colonialism and slavery (as we understand them today) were both their idea first, and copied by spaniards in order to compete with them, during the reconquista. history has somehow forgotten that christopher colombus was actually brown and that the genocidal spaniards that followed him were all part arab bastards with tanned or brown skin as well. christianity itself was invented by and spread by brown southerners northwards, in an attempt to settle the lighter skinned german, slavic and celtic speaking people of northern europe.

arabic colonialism, which started around the year 700 ce and peaked around the year 1258 ce before entering a period of decline after the mongolian sack of baghdad (an arab city built on top of a greek city built on top of the persified ruins of babylon), created a large contiguously ruled region of the middle east and north africa with a common language and religion and very different ethnic identities. the people of north africa know they have a history older than islam, even if they can't fully articulate it due to it being lost or destroyed, and largely identify as a disparate group of people that are not arabs. the iranians kept their language and modified the religion of the arabs and know they are not arabs and get angry when you suggest they are. my theory of kurdish origins is that the kurds descend from mesopotamian persians and greeks fleeing the arabic invasion c. 700 and the etymology of kurd as 'refugee' is the correct one. they have held out in the mountains, resisting arabic colonization, for centuries. asian migrants named turks entered the region with the mongols and maintained their identity where they settled, eventually succeeding in conquering rome, where the arabs had failed for centuries (legend has it due to a giant bulgarian-built catapult, but in truth due to the slow decline of a decaying imperial force). the arabs were most successful in colonizing iraq, and arguably nearly succeeded in colonizing egypt; in egypt, they know their history, but have largely chosen to identify as arabs. likewise, most palestinians are fully aware that they are actually colonized and converted hebrews and not migratory arabs, but they have decided to ignore that, and have in varying levels of sincerity adopted a founding myth about canaanite continuity that no archaeologist takes seriously. the dna tests are really pretty clear.

lebanon is actually most similar to iran in that they know they are not arabs and do not like it when you tell them they are. but, who are the lebanese?

the lebanese are the descendants of the phoenicians and carthaginians, and my understanding of the actual history (not the biblical history) is that you cannot differentiate between hebrews and phoenicians, who probably called themselves canaanites. the roman genocide of the ancient lebanese was so thorough that we only have scattered fragments of their language, but it was basically ancient hebrew, and we cannot even state with certainty what they called themselves, but it strongly appears to be canaanites. the religion of the ancient hebrew masses was likely not post-cyrus judaism (a fact alluded to in the old testament myths, as the people are constantly being punished for not worshipping yahweh), but the ancient canaanite religion of the region, which was the same religion as the phoenicians and carthaginians. it is even likely that the roman persecution of the jews, which happened centuries before constantine purportedly saw a genocidal vision in the sky, was based on the identification of jews with carthaginians and the realization that cato's mission had not been fully accomplished. the idea that jews eat babies appears to be based on roman propaganda from the punic wars, which may or may not have had some basis in fact, as there is some evidence of child sacrifice occurring in carthage. the story of abraham and isaac in the old testament is probably a memory of ancient canaanite/hebrew/carthaginian/phoenecian child sacrifice rituals, and likely records how the authorities changed this practice, some time around or perhaps before the persian conquest undid the assyrian captivity.

if the phoenicians were in fact a branch of northern hebrews that existed before the return from captivity established a jewish origin myth and national and cultural identity, it does follow that lebanon might belong in a greater israel.

...if you're insane.

which these people are.

i want to ask a different question, and it is this: would the substantive christian minority in lebanon rather live under iranian hegemony, or be a part of israel?

the lebanese people are entitled to self-determination. and, if the shit hits the fan, israel may find itself with allies in lebanon that are interested in political union.

One tradition holds that the Black Stone was placed by Adam in the original Kaaba.[49] Muslims believe that the stone was originally pure and dazzling white, but has since turned black because of the sins of the people who touch it.

yikes.

i'm not a christian, but i'm mostly european (i'm a little bit native american and a little bit jewish, too) and the closest thing i can compare this hajj thing to in european christian history is the crusades.

it's craziness.

they need to cancel it.

what kind of stupid religion keeps putting on an event every year when the result is that people always die?

the muslim world needs to cancel this stupid barbaric hajj ritual, where people die of stampedes or dehydration every year. it's the dumbest part of the dumbest religion out there.

it's actual a very worrying development to see the israeli military disobey civilian oversight, even if you think they should do so in order to get the aid in, which i don't really agree with, given that hamas is just going to take control of it when it gets there. the un needs to find better ways to distribute food that bypass or circumvent the terrorist group and israel should absolutely be trying to make it look like they're the ones handing out the food, not the terrorists.

israel likes to make sure everybody knows it's a democracy, and it is, to an extent. that is true. but it has been careening towards dictatorship for many years now.

the military should be listening to the government. there is no valid excuse for not doing so.

this is also reflective of the reality that the democratic party is in desperate need of generational change.

biden wants to turn the clocks back to 1980. the democratic party needs somebody that wants to turn them forwards to 2080.

the statements coming from the g7 on the israel issue are like statements written in 1975, coming to us via a time machine.

i read an article accusing joe biden of being stuck in the 90s. no. he's actually stuck in the 70s.

somebody needs to explain to biden and his binkie that their concept of the middle east is so out of touch with reality on the ground that they should refrain from interfering, not try to place the peacemaker and just get out of the way, because they are so divorced from reality that all they can do is make the situation worse.

i don't like that i'm falling in line behind republican statements, but joe biden's middle eastern policy is indiscernible from jimmy carter's, and having this doddering, out of touch old man trying to interfere in events on the ground from a perspective that belongs to 50 years ago is the last thing the world needs.

he's going to do more to hinder than to help and should focus on his own fucking country.

this guy tony blinken really is the incarnation of neville chamberlain. i've never seen a dumber liberal that's less able to learn the lessons of the past, or more willing to repeat the mistakes of the past.

they want to put the plo in charge of gaza, but this is a non-starter. to begin with, the voters in gaza rejected fatah in the last election, which was 2006. the plo has absolutely zero democratic legitimacy in the region and forcing them into power will probably even lead to a civil war.

if gaza is to return to self-rule, it clearly needs fresh elections. there is no way to avoid this, it's mandatory. otherwise, this was a waste of time.

however, i don't think gaza should return to self-rule at the moment. democracy has certain prerequisites and they simply aren't being met. the outcome is predictable.

they want a plan. i get it. i think israel has a plan, they're just apprehensive about telling us. the plan needs to be (and probably is) that the united nations takes on the role of a civilian government, while israel maintains military control, for the foreseeable future. this un-backed civilian government needs to focus on re-educating the population and minimizing the role of islamic fundamentalism.

fresh elections to transfer power to a civilian authority should be scheduled for c. 2040ish, once the re-education process has produced a new generation of leaders.

any attempt to transfer to self-rule, including via the plo, is just going to result in more violence. this is stupid and shouldn't be given the time of day as a serious option.

there's some articles up about lia thomas not having standing to fight her competition ban because she's not a member of the usa team (which is legally convincing enough, and does point to her need to deal with the issue locally, first). i want to change the topic.

i'm not very interested in sports, but this kind of gets to the core of trans acceptance issues. i've pointed out before that there is no evidence that men are better at swimming than women and quite a bit of evidence pointing to the suggestion that women are actually better at swimming than men, but i'm trying to get my argument across that gender isn't a very useful way to create fair competition pools in the modern era and that more objective empirical characteristics should be considered instead. 

gender is really meaningless and should be seen as such. in swimming, the most important physical characteristic is height - taller swimmers perform better than shorter ones. so, the question that should be being asked shouldn't be if lia thomas' gender gives her some kind of advantage (there is literally no science supporting that idea, it's actually blatant sexist bullshit) but if her height does.

lia is in fact at the very extreme of variation in her competition pool, in terms of height. she is not substantively taller than her closest competitor, but she is at the very top of the list.

https://www.essentiallysports.com/us-sports-news-olympics-news-swimming-news-how-tall-is-lia-thomas-compared-to-usa-swimmings-best-female-athletes/

you could consequently argue that lia's height does give her the same type of advantage that the other elite competitors that are at or around 6 feet have over shorter swimmers. and, i would agree that something should be done about that.

instead of having women compete against women, and men compete against men, why not have pools based on height so that people that are 5" 4' can compete against people their own size, and people in the 6 foot or higher range can also swim against people their own size, as well?

if you find the fact that lia is intimidating at 6 feet tall, i'll point out to you that the elite male swimmers are all four or five inches taller than her. that isn't fair, either. her height is actually closer to female variation, in context.

the loser stalking me from upstairs has begun to "ni" at me, and while i appreciate the absurdity of this, i'm also just about to fucking snap.

this guy openly admits that he works for israeli intelligence, but what he's doing here - going to michigan and explaining to the dumb kids that hamas is a right-wing fundamentalist islamic militant group and not a socialist revolutionary movement - is extremely necessary, because the dumb kids actually think that hamas is like che guavara or something rather than indistinguishable from isis, as it has become recently. it's a failure in education, so a university is the right place to do it.

i've written a little about this myself. the actual reality is that hamas would immediately shoot most of these stupid protesters on contact. you'd be lucky to get sent to prison. they would just kill you. instantly.

as jello biafra once said, "you'd be the first to go".

so, yes, he's working for israeli intelligence, and he admits it, but it doesn't matter. if you're a hamas sympathizer, you should listen to this.

not all arabs are fundamentalist muslims, but almost all arabs are in fact crazy. yikes. you can take the islam out of the arab, but you can't take the crazy out.

it's a reminder that israel does actually have arab allies in it's fight against hamas, and that is something worth realizing. that is something the media doesn't want you to realize.

in fact, i probably have facebook posts from as far back as 2010 referring to israel's policies in palestine as "genocide", and distinctly recall having conversations with people where i present "genocide" as a more accurate description than "apartheid" over the 2011-2013 period, for the reason that israel simply does not want to enslave the palestinians and never did, it wants to exterminate them. i have not posted pre-2013 posts here yet.

the apartheid comparison was empirically terrible.

i presented genocide as something that was more accurate. 

did i author this? i dunno.

 

the team also unveiled special terry fox shorts (not pictured) in the form of unisex skirts.

https://www.tricitynews.com/local-news/these-special-basketball-jerseys-commemorate-port-coquitlams-terry-fox-9067701

it's been 55 years since the 1967 war and the arabs and jews hate each other now more than ever.

segregation has been a complete failure, in terms of creating a stable peace.

some other approach is required.

i've been periodically googling chomsky for his response to the gaza mess because i was curious. i would actually expect his response to be a little different from that on the current fake left, as chomsky was an unabashed zionist that was critical of the state of israel's behaviour because he thought it put the zionist project under threat of destruction and not somebody that hated himself or wanted israel to disappear. chomsky always was clear that he supported a zero state solution, preferred a single state as a pragmatic approach (years ago, he would bring up yugoslavia...) and thought two states was an absurdity and a non-starter. chomsky wanted to support palestinian self-determination in the context of zionism rather than in opposition to it, which made him an anachronism. but, i think his position was preferable to anything we've heard on the left or the right since camp david. the idea of two states has been an utter failure and the insistence on segregation has simply led to entrenched divisions and perpetual conflict. he saw that coming, and he was right.

i would certainly have expected noam to be critical of israel's response as being disproportionate. but, what i've been struggling with trying to define is what "proportionate" means in the context of such a vicious attack and concluded that a proportionate response is a ferocious one intended to produce a strong disincentive. i would have liked to hear him try to articulate his concept of proportionality, and i'm sure he would have brought up something i hadn't thought about, even if i disagreed with him. i don't think he would have aligned with the hamas sympathizers.

unfortunately, we're going to all need to figure that out on our own.

the left is going to be a very different place without noam chomsky, who has played the role of virtual yoda since before my father was born, and before there was even a yoda. but, this was predictable. eventually.

and so it goes.

this is predictable, and what happens when you negotiate with terrorists - they interpret hostage taking as an effective extortion strategy and they do it again.

expect further kidnappings by iranian proxies, because our reaction to the kidnappings in gaza has demonstrated to them that it's an effective strategy.

https://dppa.un.org/en/yemen-un-chief-demands-release-of-aid-workers-held-houthis

yeah.

labour may actually lose popular support, in comparison to 2017, but the tories are getting hammered by nigel farage, and if they don't think sunak's ethnicity is a component of that, they need to wake up.

i'm a hardly a tory supporter, even if i would expect a starmer pmo to be disappointing, to say the least. however, there's been no uptick in labour support. at all.

sunak should have resigned to allow another leadership race, rather than call an election, but labour will take the easy win.

is the actual truth that rishi sunak is losing horribly because he's not an indigenous brit?

well, i have some sympathy for that position. unlike canada or the united states, the united kingdom is not a colonial state. 

brits have every right to expect self-rule and to want to elect somebody that looks like them.

the united nations has been clear for decades that any negotiation with terrorist groups is in contravention of international law. no exceptions*.

* except when the victims are jews.

further, the unsc resolution adopted yesterday appears to rather blatantly contradict previous unsc resolutions that ban any negotiation with terrorism, but...this body is subject to no oversight and it's resolutions have no legal force, so of what consequence is it when it contradicts itself, other than to challenge it's relevance and validity?

a body that contradicts itself with no mechanism for oversight is of no consequence.

(2)  Consular roles do not include:

(a)  Participation in developing and implementing a ransom strategy.  Such activity is contrary to U.S. Government policy on hostage taking and kidnapping.  (See 7 FAM 1821 e and 7 FAM 1823.)

(b)  Encouraging families or employers to negotiate with hostage takers.  Such activity is contrary to U.S. Government policy on hostage taking and kidnapping.  (See 7 FAM 1821 e and 7 FAM 1823.)

The U.S. Government will make no concessions to individuals or groups holding official or private U.S. citizens hostage.  The United States will use every appropriate resource to gain the safe return of U.S. citizens who are held hostage.  At the same time, it is U.S. Government policy to deny hostage takers the benefits of ransom, prisoner releases, policy changes, or other acts of concession.  See 7 FAM 1821 e regarding U.S. Government policy and limitations on the role of Foreign Service posts and the Department of State should private citizens, organizations or companies elect to negotiate with hostage takers or pay ransom.

https://fam.state.gov/fam/07fam/07fam1820.html

frankly, i think an impeachment hearing for anthony blinken is justified, based on the news reports i'm hearing.

the legality of blinken negotiating with hamas, or ordering that israel do so, is an open question in american law.

the supreme court would seem to think it's illegal, but obama tried to evade it via an executive order.

https://archive.law.upenn.edu/live/files/5494-khaw---hostage-negotiations-with-terrorists-10

as far as i can tell, the biden administration has not even addressed the issue at all. 

some pressure should be placed on the biden administration to explain why it has decided to negotiate with a terrorist group, all of a sudden, and without providing any explanation or justification for doing so.

i mean, do you remember what happened to jimmy carter with the iranian hostages?

i don't either, although i've read about it. almost nobody alive remembers that.

joe biden remembers.

is it even illegal for the united states to negotiate with hamas, or demand israel does?

i'm not sure we have another example of the united states acting so blatantly imperially as we are now seeing with blinken essentially lying about the authorship of the peace deal, and just forcing it through, whether israel likes it or not. linda thomas greenfield is apparently signing the peace deal on behalf of israel and telling them to sit down and shut up.

the terms of the proposed deal, as far as i can put them together, are entirely delusional. israel is being ordered to negotiate with a terrorist group. the position of all civilized countries should be that they will not negotiate with terrorist groups.

there is nothing that can be accomplished by negotiating with hamas. but, israel is in a very difficult position, where the president is basically a complete retard, and his foreign policy establishment is desperately trying to avoid losing an election, which is obviously actually going to backfire. biden is going to lose ten times as much support for abandoning israel as he is going to gain for siding with a terrorist group, and that is actually how the republicans should frame it - biden and blinken are in bed with the terrorists.

what a bunch of idiots....

meanwhile, hamas will continue to expect to be recognized as a state in return for the hostages, which is a tactic that should be universally condemned, and all israel can do in response is to fight.

broadly speaking, i would expect that muslim canadians would openly acknowledge that they intend to implement sharia law in canada. i mean, that's what the definition of a muslim is, somebody that abides by islamic law. the religion is the legal code. we already have sharia law operating at the family court level, in the form of consent agreements, and the common law system is designed to absorb competing legal ideas rather than resist them.

while it is true that not all arabs are muslims, it is extremely unhelpful for secular liberals to pretend that muslims don't want to enforce their laws on us. of course they do. 

i'm a secular liberal, and i want to bring secular liberalism to the middle east; i want to enforce secular values in saudi arabia and iran, and i expect to deal with  a secular court system in my secular country. i don't deny that. i'd be honest if an iranian asked me.

in fact, i've heard my neighbours say things like "islamic law is coming to canada soon" in response to being frustrated that the cops won't enforce islamic law on me, because they've actually tried to get the police to do it.

i believe that real secular liberals understand that islam is in fact going to be their dominant opponent over the next several decades and that islam does in fact pose the single largest threat to the country's secular institutions. i want to vote for a political party that understand the need to stay vigilant against the threat islam poses to the west, not one that is going to cave into political correctness in an attempt to buy votes from a group that, in truth, doesn't even support them in large numbers, because they're diametrically opposed to liberalism, ideologically. muslims are just about the most naturally conservative and overwhelmingly right-wing group in the country.

the realization that one of the people holding the hostages was a journalist for al-jazeera is further confirmation that al jazeera, and the qatari government in general, is not a neutral or unbiased observer but an active participant in the conflict.

the reality is that al jazeera is hamas propaganda and should be seen as a wing of the iranian government, not as a valid media source.

pro-tip: if you don't want to suffer a thousand casualties in a commando raid by the israeli army, you shouldn't hold israeli citizens hostage for months and make unrealistic demands regarding their release.

i wish israel had done this earlier, and i hope they do it again.

israel's negotiating position should be that they will turn gaza into a crater if hamas does not release the hostages now. what hamas is entitled to receive in return for the hostages is not being destroyed.

of course jews harm children. everybody knows that. the un is just stating the obvious.

ugh. 

what year is it?

i had to get some groceries done and to clean the apartment up but i'm going to need to flash this board over the weekend.

i've been able to boot my backup pIII 500 into xp if i have to use it in the short run. i could also finally build my 64 bit pc. but i don't want to lose the 32-bit tower and will need to replace the board if i can't fix it.

i'm pissed off, but so be it.

i am still redesigning my network and there is a large list of things i will need to do before i can regain some semblance of normality and get back to work. my new year's resolution was made with honest intent and in good faith, but i have not been able to follow thtough. 

there is going to be a series of new blogs coming relatively shortly, and this blog will be reserved strictly for political analysis. but, i've been unable to do function in any sense whatsoever while i've been fighting with my hormones, as it has required me to spend all of my waking time cleaning myself and eating. if the drugging is at least over, i can hopefully get back to doing something shortly.

for right now, i need to clean the apartment and focus on trying to save my main pc so that i know if i can or not. this is a dominant priority, and i will need to prioritize replacing it with a comparable board if i can't flash it back to health.

authorizing the use of long range missiles from ukraine is insane and merely demonstrates that putin was right.

biden has always been a foreign policy dunce and he needs to be removed from office by any means possible asap before he stumbles the planet into world war three.

trump is the harmless idiot. biden is the dangerous buffoon.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ships-caribbean-ukraine-b43c5b448f5803e2c8c1466e4ad7516d

while i think that netanyahu is right and biden is wrong, israel needs to understand that the united states does not allow for dissent and that disobeying orders is certain to have catastrophic outcomes.

the united states does not want a hot war with iran because it knows it will draw the russians in. yet, netanyahu is correct in realizing that it's position is existential. further, biden's position is stupid; the israeli alliance is of extreme importance to the united states, and the saudis will never be able to replace it, as they are both unreliable and backwards.

i did not endorse biden because i worried that his foreign policy would be catastrophic, and i was right.

israel needs to stall until october.

i'm unfortunately on the brink of endorsing trump because his foreign policy is to the left of biden's.

i'm not being dramatic.

i've been the victim of at least a year's worth of brutal torture. in fact, i think this has been going on for longer than a year.

i'm realizing that i am going to need to talk to somebody to help me process this torture.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210107053543/https://irct.org/media-and-resources/latest-news/article/1027

“Justin’s like a captain of a hockey team; he’s not the manager of it; he’s not the owner of it,” - justin trudeau's half brother, from his obviously very right-wing mother

this is a very canadian statement.

it's also something that canadians should be analyzing very carefully because it is both true and very problematic. our prime minister should not be like the captain of the hockey team, whose role is to increase morale and self-confidence; he or she should be the manager of it. this is a clearly stated true statement that effectively summarizes what is wrong with our democracy.

it's actually quiet here on a friday and i'm happy about it. 

i'm realizing that i'm having difficulty ascertaining whether i'm remembering things or hearing them. i have an appointment booked with my gp about talking about ptsd. but, i think the drugging has stopped, thankfully.

the last month or two, i've been fighting off a psychotherapist that is trying to do some kind of conversion therapy on me. this sounds stupid on it's face, and obvious pseudo-science a priori, but there is a history of freudian (and probably lacanian...) pseudo-science being applied to queer people to try to "cure" them. that is what is apparently going on and i'm realizing it's been the purpose of the drugging the whole time.

i've been yelling at this person for months to fuck off. i think i finally got through to them this week. but they may also be hiding. i can't tell.

as mentioned previously, the idea that they're going to change my gender identity via psychotherapy is moronically idiotic on it's face, but it was predictable that trying to do so would trigger my ptsd, and that is exactly what has happened. while there is no possibility that their "therapy" will have any actual effect, i am slowly coming to the realization that i'm going to need actual real therapy to help me recover from the trauma that's been inflicted on me.

my main pc has now died on me c. 2007, 2014 and 2024. the first two times, i was able to force the bios into the board using the boot block (2007) and then a bus pirate (2014). the psu still works, but the fans aren't spinning at all. this is a worse problem than previously.

i don't know what happened. i woke up to a dead pc and it looked like somebody had ripped the power button out of the console. i don't know how the power button became disconnected from the console.

the machine has no wireless and is airgapped. the pentium d chip has no remote management part in the chip, which is what i've been trying to block access to because it's what they're trying to break into.  i know my landlords are trying to hack my network. it seems obvious that they bricked it when i was asleep.

yeah. 

either they shorted it or they tried to flash it and it bricked. i don't know yet. i can't fix it if it's shorted, but i can maybe reprogram it.

this was an expensive pc when i bought it, but it would not be expensive to replace it, although i would need to be very particular about it. the applications running on this machine cannot use multicore processors well. this blazing fast pentium D, with 2x3.8, is going to perform better using these applications than a newer quadcore is, which is counter-intuitive but why i built the thing the way i did and why i bought a quadcore for the video editing machine and not the recording machine.

the fact that you can't hack this processor is also a benefit i'd like to keep.

i blogged what happened the last time the machine wouldn't post, in march and april of 2014: 

http://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/03/

i thought i saved that site but i can't find it now. i'd like to find it again.

biden is concerned about his re-election bid.

he has consistently taken bad pr advice from questionable sources, and this is just another example.

almost nobody is going to consider a war in israel to be a ballot issue, except for right-wing christians. these dumb kids in the tents are just trying to get laid, or are so outside of the spectrum that they're unreachable.

the mainstream position in the united states is strongly in support of israel, and biden is in truth going to lose more voters in the middle than he's going to gain on the fringes. 

let's be clear about this: these hamas sympathizers are the fringe of the fringe. i would label them as far right, even if they call themselves left wing. i couldn't tell the difference between these pro-hamas protesters and the kind of white supremacists you see organize in the deep south; if anything the white supremacists are less blatantly racist. 

mainstream opinion in the united states is overwhelmingly pro-israel and has no sympathy for hamas at all and biden is going to get bludgeoned by trump on the point if he doesn't wake up to that fact.

it's worth pointing out that john kerry lost an election he should have easily won, and his position on the war on terrorism was a central part of that.