it's kind of weird that you'd try and separate electronic music from music theory in the context of high school music. when i took electronic music design in grade 12 - which was in 1999 - one of the assignments in the course was to write a voice-leading arrangement for a beatles song using a program called finale, which is a scorewriting program, and there was a music theory exam as an entrance requirement to the course. i wrote an arrangement to something, which is a harrison track on abbey road. when i took electronic music design at carleton university in 2006, i used the opportunity to generate a better sounding recording of a piano sonata i had written into a scorewriter years earlier.

electronic music design isn't possible to engage in without a solid foundation in music theory, as using the software competently requires understanding how to read and write music, as that is how the software operates. midi is a system that transmits information about scored music; you need a score to use midi.

there's consequently not actually much of a difference in what's being taught. a basic music education using a midi keyboard would still require learning how to read music and apply music theory, you'd just be learning it in the context of the software that uses and in most cases requires that knowledge as a basic starting point.

i do two primary things as a musician. i am a guitarist, first, and that is what people want to see me as. but, when i write a piece of music, 90% of it is written as a score using written music, which is then played back using sequencers. that includes the drums (usually) and any synthesizer parts, but also includes parts written for orchestra, like string and horn parts. if i didn't know how to read music or didn't know anything about music theory, i wouldn't understand how to use the music software that generates the notes.

in that sense, it's actually more important to know basic music theory skills in the modern world of electronic music design than it was in a jazz or rock based world, where you didn't really actually need to know anything about music theory, you just had to have a good ear and be able to wing it. you can't improvise on a laptop in the same way as you can on a saxophone, you have to actually have some idea of what you're doing.

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2129782/for-some-canadian-students-music-class-also-means-turntables-and-midi-controllers

mr. singh certainly has every right in the world to dress and look like a goof if he wants to. that's up to him, that's his right.

and, as a voter, i have every right to tell him i could never vote for somebody of faith for prime minister, and that he clearly wants to take the country in the exact opposite direction that i do, even if i might think some of his policies are less bad than the other guy.

and herein lies the problem: anybody else could take advantage of this situation, but singh can't and the ndp could actually lose seats in an election they should be winning outright.

i mean, if we're actually talking about singh for pm, we have to ask the basic question: why does the guy look like a complete idiot? why does he have a beard down to his knees?

he's not the guy from come together.

no - he thinks he has a magic beard. that's the actual reason. it's like the story of samson in the bible. the facial hair gives him magic powers.

as a voter, how am i expected to react to that truth, when this guy tells me he wants to be prime minister? why wouldn't i just vote for a conservative christian? what's the difference?

the ndp should have planned for this scenario where they ought to be poised for a major breakthrough, but it almost seems as though they didn't, as though they intended to just be a hopeless protest party forever, and almost intentionally designed themselves out of power.

no you can't actually vote for singh for prime minister. just fucking look at the guy. it's a non-starter.

so, now what, then?

liberals at 16%?

canadians have a longstanding hobson's choice. we don't like these guys. at all. we don't have a better option, either

the unseriousness of jagmeet singh as a major political candidate - the guy looks like some kind of barbaric clown that arrived in canada via a doctor who time warp from some time in the dark ages - has, in truth, kept trudeau floating for years. if the ndp could just find somebody electable to run for prime minister that looks like he belongs to this millennia, the liberals would already be out of power by now. but, when placed with a choice between the incompetent trudeau and this creepy looking weirdo terrorist guy singh, who is just not a serious candidate due to his appearance, canadians are left stuck. that's a big part of the reason you're seeing the conservatives running at over 40%, but it's not a serious vote projection, it's a reflection of frustration with the options.

what you might see is an election with extremely low turnout, and what liberals are going to struggle with is going to be trying to get people to vote at all.

there is, however, one thing that should be taken seriously, and it's what the bloc are polling at. ontarians are not likely to swing hard for either the conservatives or the ndp and if the outcome is in the end very bad it will be because we just don't vote at all. conversely, if quebeckers are threatening to swing hard to the bloc, they probably actually will, and that could completely wipe the liberals out.

if the bloc are really running over 10% nationwide, christy clark (who i think is a more serious candidate than chrystia freeland) might want to forget about running for liberal leader and instead consider crossing the floor to the conservative party.

what do i think of h1-b visas?

i'm not american. i'm not going to analyze this in much detail. but, i've read my orwell, and it's remarkable how he's the rudimentary writer that keeps giving. some immigrants are more american than others.

but, watch this, too. they're right.

hey, i didn't see this coming like they did.

kind of nailed it.

i've been calling on israel to call the kurds.

they seem to want to focus on the greeks, which is interesting.

i have written widely about the liberation of constantinople being the end of a historical process, as turkey is a fake country full of illegal immigrants and they will eventually be deported back to asia. i've long assumed the russians will be the ones to correct this historical injustice, and there's good reasons for that.

however, in a very real sense, israel has become the new byzantium, particularly in terms of technological unevenness. if you want to get a grasp on what the byzantines were actually like in comparison to the much less advanced and barbarous arab groups in the region, the difference in technology between israel and the other countries in the region is a good demonstration. 

i think the israelis are probably more interested in building an airfield on cyprus, for now, which is currently partly under brutal turkish occupation. that would be tremendously advantageous, especially considering that the iranians have broadcast they consider it a part of historical iran (which is nonsense. cyprus is heavily linked to lebanon, and the regions are deeply carthaginian/jewish).

it's become clear enough that the israelis need a turkish containment policy; that's something to keep an eye on.

parliamentary factions have no constitutional restrictions in determining their leaders, and the suggestion that they do is complete and total nonsense.

if the party has the numbers to remove trudeau in a vote, the very clear parliamentary convention is that they can and should and any attempts to restrict that should be interpreted as unconstitutional by the liberal party mps, who should ignore it as null and void.

wayne gretzky is a high school dropout and his career in management was not very successful. 

what gretzky was able to do was consistently take advantage of the fact that you had to double team him, which meant there was always somebody else open. if you didn't double team him, he'd skate circles around everybody else, and nobody could catch him; if you did double team him, he'd just find the guy that was open. he'd get more assists in a year than anybody else got points. i don't care about hockey any more, but there was a time where my father basically forced me to care, so i ended up spending a lot of time with the numbers. he'd get like 150 assists a year, because you had to double team him.

what that means is he needed to be on a good team to be effective, and he always was on a good team. the canadian political system doesn't have an elected king like the american system does, it is more of a collective process.

the violence in syria is about to get worse than it's been in years.

i'm going to do something nobody else is doing. bizarrely.

i'm going to call for an election in syria and suggest that any lifting of sanctions should be tied to it's successful conclusion. assad said he was trying to transition to a democracy, but couldn't while he was fighting off islamists (although one will note that there were several elections in syria and they seemed to make it clear that the junta was seen as preferable to the islamists by almost all). nonetheless, the lack of elections, accurately or not, was repeatedly cited as a reason sanctions were placed on assad. while i'm perhaps being naive in expecting something less than abject hypocrisy from europe and north america, these new dictators should be held to the same terms.

if we're going to criticize assad for being undemocratic, we should also criticize the islamists for being undemocratic and expect them to hold immediate elections to determine what direction the syrian people want to actually move in - towards wahhabism, as is apparently going to be enforced, or towards secularism and even towards europe itself.

with that in mind, i want to draw attention to trump's recent focus on controlling shipping lanes through panama and greenland. people that read geopolitics shouldn't find this that confusing at all, but the mainstream media is completely confused about it and needs some guidance.

i drew some attention to the monroe doctrine in the context of trump's tendency to tell foreign powers he's not interested in what happens in their spheres of influence. while the united states has far more influence in venezuela than is acknowledged, it is nonetheless the case that, if you want to exchange ukraine for venezuela, that's a good deal from america's perspective. what trump is clearly misunderstanding is that, twenty years ago, the united states would hardly be making deals with the russians over regions in the western hemisphere, and that the idea of making a deal to assert control over a region in the western hemisphere is actually an abrogation of the doctrine, which says that any interference is an act of war. monroe is not about making deals with the europeans, it's about drawing a line in the sand and saying "you stay the fuck out". worse, when america was the hegemon, it could tell the russians to stay the fuck out of venezuela and start a war in ukraine, and there wouldn't be any discussion of deals made, because it was the hegemon and it didn't make deals, it made orders. a hegemon doesn't make deals or trade things, it makes demands and orders things. clinton would have never made a deal with the lowly russians or chinese; it would have been beneath america's standing as the hegemon. a request to make a deal with your enemies is a statement of weakness and in some ways a plea for mercy. strong powers don't make deals with their enemies. as such, the horsetrading actually represents a decline of american power, not an assertion of it, and i don't think trump understands that.

that aside, and i think i'm adding too much theory to trump's thought process but basically getting it right (he's not trying to enforce monroe, if he even knows monroe, he's just thinking in terms of spheres of influence, so that an analysis by mersheimer is probably more appropriate), the question of controlling shipping lanes is actually foundational to the developing world war with the chinese as america's primary enemy. this isn't a weird set of priorities at all; this is exactly what essentially all of the conflicts that exist right now are actually about.

during the obama administration, they talked about a "pivot" to china, which has evolved into the "quad" under biden and is essentially a chinese containment policy (in the literature, you're never allowed to call the chinese containment policy a chinese containment policy and that goes back decades. excruciating double think is normal in sino-american relations.). the chinese containment policy is largely about trying to use the indians to create a choke point in the malacca strait, which they've been resistant in doing. so, the united states has tried to sell nuclear subs to the australians to get them to do it instead, and has been pushing for japanese rearmament to spook the chinese into submission in the north. this is all about controlling this extremely strategic waterway in indonesia and malaysia.

there's currently an armed group at the bottom of the arabian peninsula that is shooting at western ships transiting back and forth through the suez canal. our media calls this group "houthi rebels" and claims they are an "iranian proxy", but they have access to hypersonic weapons, which belies that narrative. this appears to in truth be a chinese military base, and the chinese are in truth apparently trying to take control of the suez canal. the official chinese presence in the region is in africa in a small country carved out of ethiopia called djibouti, but they seem to be getting very advanced weapons to the rebels very easily, who are then using them to harass american shipping and lob missiles into israel. the chinese are apparently expecting to eventually take control of israel via an arab proxy, but they don't appear to have thought it through carefully, as that will never work. the point is that all of this mess isn't about gaza or palestine or syria or iran, it's about china taking control of the suez canal.

further, there's a reason that putin seized control of crimea first. ukraine is a relatively large and diverse country with a lot of assets, including large nuclear power plants and a substantive industrial heartland. what did putin prioritize first? the naval base in sevastopol, which is what the americans were trying to take control of. this ties into control of the dardanelles, which has been a major point of conflict since the end of the second world war (which lingered on in greece, as churchill and stalin fought a proxy war to try to control these shipping routes). russia's war aims have long included access to a warm water deep sea port, and the black sea remains the closest thing they've got, even as they're boxed in by the turks (and the greeks). ukraine is complicated, but frustrating russian shipping is a big component of what it has been about since 2014. 

that's what a lot of the conflict currently going is actually about, controlling shipping lanes. let's remember that this is what the first two world wars were actually about as well - controlling shipping lanes, and access to resources in africa and southeast asia.

in context, the united states should be exerting control over the panama canal as that is a choke point that is within it's sphere of influence and the panamanians will just have to fucking deal with it. further, exerting control over the north atlantic (although, i think trump should be focusing more on iceland than greenland, as greenland as actually a little out of the way) is going to be extremely important in any developing conflict over shipping in the region. i mentioned previously that the united states invaded greenland and iceland in world war two. they also invaded newfoundland, and it was the american invasion of then british newfoundland that led to it becoming a part of canada. the british invaded norway, but they had to abandon it essentially immediately, and the germans had a huge occupation force in the country. conflict over control of norway was a major part of world war two that's largely not talked about, but it was one of the most important parts of the war. at the time, there were german uboats stalking the north atlantic, which might not be the concern today (there are russian nuclear subs sailing through the region, but they're not harassing trade. yet). in the long run, as the ice melts and a northwest passage opens up, whoever controls the north atlantic is going to control a huge amount of global trade. trump is right to try to get in before that happens.   

does that mean trump is implicitly accepting the truth of climate change? well, nobody thinks trump actually believes that climate change is a chinese hoax, which is clearly absurd, although that is in some way a brilliant tactic to get out of having to answer questions about the topic at a republican fundraiser or primary debate. trump clearly believes that climate change is real, he just doesn't want to stop it. if elon musk can do one fucking useful thing shadowing trump, i'd like it to be to sit trump down and get a coherent fucking answer from him on climate change (in a closed door meeting, without having to be concerned about winning republican voters) and a dedication to a coherent fucking policy. what does trump imagine is going to happen to his florida hideout in ten-twenty years? did he see what happened to the region this year?

so, we'll have to see what trump actually does, but signalling a focus on shipping lanes indicates that he's actually thinking strategically. this isn't random, wacky shit. whomever is helping him do that should keep it up.

let me be as clear as i can: i am not a trump supporter. i have never endorsed trump. i endorsed clinton in 2016 (which was a rare event; i very rarely endorse democrats), and endorsed not voting or voting green or socialist in 2020 and 2024.

to begin with, i'm transgendered, but i'm not a right-winger, i'm an old timey by the book socialist that makes bernie sanders look moderate. old timey by the book socialists are completely outside of the political spectrum, and it actually causes me to take weird positions; i have at times aggressively argued that the soft-left liberal party is actually more "socialist" in a by-the-book way than the prairie populist ndp, which was initially a prairie gospel party and, as such, has always held a number of very not socialist policies. almost nobody cares about these technicalities and doesn't understand why i'm so anti-ndp and it consistently alienates me from a "modern left", which i continually disparage as "fake". 

the problem with the democrats, and biden's been worse than anybody, is that they're so terrible that they can't even get a socialist transwoman to vote for them to block a candidate using large amounts of sophistry and demagoguery to scapegoat you, personally, to win votes. i don't expect he'll be able to do much substantive, but it's still unsettling to see the turn of events.

so, i'm certainly not a trump supporter. at all. but, as i'm aware of the terribleness of the alternative, i'm going to do what almost nobody anywhere else will do, which is analyze his policies fairly. i've been extremely critical of biden's foreign policy, but i've been as fair as i can, and i'm going to continue that with trump.

well, it's predictable. i'm not a christian, and i don't like public displays of religious symbols, but to have your country ransacked by a bunch of barbarians and then watch them burn down your symbols would be pretty difficult.

biden is likely unaware of the ethnic tapestry in syria, he just has a vague concept that they "believe in islam over there". there are no substantive religious minorities in afghanistan because everybody got killed by the mongols, leaving the majority muslim groups to build in a vacuum. as per my song, afghanistan has a history of buddhism, hinduism and other religions associated with persian and indian language groups, but they've all been wiped out for centuries.

syria, on the other hand, is very complicated, and to go in there and try and tell everybody they have to abide by sharia law now because we say so is really being a bull in a china shop. 

however.

it's noticeable that there are christmas trees in syria. there probably were not christmas trees in syria before the end of the first world war, because it's a celtic-germanic-slavic pagan ritual. the slavs more so than the germans of central-eastern europe used to literally worship the trees before they were converted to christianity in a crusade. some indigenous american groups also treat trees as sacred objects. indigenous peoples seemed to have an awareness that trees are alive and saw them as occupying a different realm of existence, as though they represent a portal to the spirit world. sometimes, gods are said to live in trees, but that seems overly crude; the forests are sacred spaces because they're the transit points. it's a central part of slavic pagan religious history, but it has no analogue in ancient syrian christianity.

(https://www.slavorum.org/the-cult-of-the-trees-in-slavic-mythology/)

the french must have brought the christmas trees to syria.

either way, the syrian christians are pissed and i don't blame them. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/24/protest-syrian-capital-christmas-tree-burned

under ghadaffi, libya was a secular society.

look how far they've fallen into dark age barbarism.

allowing large parts of the world to collapse into barbarism like this has effects for the rest of the world. it's not trivial.

"Libya is not a place for personal freedoms," Emad Al-Trabelsi, the interior minister of Libya's Tripoli-based, UN-backed Government of National Unity saidearlier this month, adding that "those seeking freedom should go to Europe."

https://www.dw.com/en/libyas-new-morality-police-to-crack-down-on-womens-rights/a-70796537

when obama left office, this war was more or less over. some skirmishes had to be mopped up, but the jihadists had been thoroughly defeated. the west was triumphant.

when biden leaves office, the jihadists will be in control of three countries (afghanistan, syria, libya), which puts them in a stronger position than they've ever been in, and while i'm sure they made pinky swears to biden personally that they love america and will fight the russians for perpetuity, the shifting nature of barbarian alliances generates tremendous levels of instability and makes this outcome extremely dangerous. there is a new axis of evil developing out of those three terror states that's going to need to be eradicated.

that is biden's foreign policy legacy in the medium term: the return of islam not just as america's single greatest threat, but as a clear and present danger, and i hope the new administration realizes it and takes steps to neutralize it.

while americans are famous for their hypocrisy on human rights issues, we haven't seen this kind of openly deplorably abject hypocrisy in american foreign policy since poppy bush in the early 90s.

would you fight for this? would you fight to save this if you had to?

i would not. i would get out of the way and let it fall, and seek to start again, from first principles.

"but we can't have an election because there's a war"

that's what assad said.

verbatim.

i wasn't sure at first when they disastrously pulled out of afghanistan using the same logic they're using in syria, but it's been a few years and we can summarize what biden has done. call it the biden doctrine.

1. in his infinite stupidity, biden has completely reversed the very smart changes to foreign policy that were brought in by obama. he's wiped it all out. obama never happened.

2. he has instead thoroughly, wholeheartedly reintroduced the carter-reagan policy of funding mujahideen groups backed by regressive forces in the arab world to fight the soviets. i'm not sure biden sees any difference between putin and khrushchev or xi and mao; he's not fighting putin, he's fighting khrushchev.

3. in eastern europe, they're funding nazi groups instead of islamist groups, but islamism and nazism are ideologically indiscernible from each other. this is why they had to put a jew in charge of ukraine in a rigged election. speaking of which...ukraine's a little overdue for one of those, huh? websites now talk about the "next ukrainian presidential election" in language that is identical to hamas' rule in gaza or fatah' rule in the west bank. ukraine wants into nato and the eu, but it can't have regular elections? no. ukraine should face deep international sanctions if it doesn't immediately have a free and fair election, and the europeans should be the ones pressuring them to do it.

4. this was the policy that created the forces on the ground that led to 9/11.

5. the filthy, disgusting animal they've put in charge in syria is in fact an al qaeda member.

6. the cliche is that the definition of insanity is doing the same things and expecting different outcomes, but that is not insanity. what it is is abject stupidity.

we're in the same place we were in in 1999ish, and i'd get ready for a very big attack in the next 5 years, as syria becomes a safe haven for terrorist groups to rebuild due to these al qaeda cells that the americans have stupidly placed directly in government, in the hopes that they'll fight the russians for them.

sadly, we will then need to go in and obliterate al qaeda in syria.

so, they're sending matt gaetz to jail, right?

let me be clear about this, because the only country that seems to not be retarded right now is israel.

if the west continues to support these kinds of actors in the region, it's going to experience extreme blowback that it might not be able to stop.

i understand that biden lives in the 1950s and actually stupidly thinks that arabs want to live under sharia law, but they don't, and especially not in syria, and this is going to create a disaster that will need to be responded to in the medium term. 

thankfully, the jews are cleaning up the mess the best they can, but this is not their responsibility and they can't be expected to take the lead on the issue. 

i do not want to see sanctions lifted on syria, or to have this group of bloodthirsty terrorists taken off the terrorist list. 

rather, i'd like to see serious sanctions placed on the turks for exporting terrorism to syria.

i am shocked and baffled that the europeans want to actually send people back to live in a repressive theocracy, when they should be doing everything they can to get the vulnerable out before it's too late, but it really demonstrates how much of an orwellian lie the concept of human rights has become in the west.

it is increasingly the truth that the term "human rights" in the west means "the ability to enforce archaic and repressive laws from the middle east in geographic spaces overseen by western legal systems without any adherence to western (or modern, really) concepts of human rights".

to the disgusting animal that has recently taken control of syria,

don't ever consider trying to take a picture with me unless you clean your face off first. as it is, if we're ever in the same room, i'd expect you respect social distancing to keep that bacteria-filled toilet face of yours away from me.

thanks,

jessica

so, when trump tells other world leaders he doesn't care about their sphere, is that because he intends to flex the monroe doctrine?

i would prefer the good neighbour policy.

however, i actually agree that it's crazy that the united states doesn't have troops on the panama canal. i'm not suggesting they need to go in there and take this guy out like they did noriega, or that they should occupy the whole country, but they should absolutely have a clear presence protecting the canal itself, including a blockade on the north american side to keep migrants south of the canal. it's a choke point.

they could always nuke it and open up the lanes a little (yes i'm joking).

the united states has invaded greenland and iceland before and will do so again if it has to. it's really up to the islanders, not to denmark or norway. if i lived there, i might think about it.

the media narrative around the situation has been rather surreal. apparently, trudeau is a bad boyfriend for dumping her over zoom.

?

let's wake up for a second and remember that the cabinet serves at the pleasure of the prime minister who, in fact, has the parliamentary task of assigning people to the roles he thinks are best suited for them. granted, trudeau looks like a goof because carney bailed on him. however, freeland's response has been insolent, entitled, self-centered and undemocratic and her temper tantrum for not getting what she wants has simply made herself look unelectable, in my perspective. 

she should have taken the role she was assigned, and i have absolutely no sympathy for her for getting demoted at all.

but, like i say, somebody has to lose this thing. let her do it.

if chrystia freeland really wants to be the one that loses this election, maybe the party ought to step aside and let her do it.

she thinks she's due for a "promotion", as though she works for a company called the government. she has zero connection with voters and zero ability to connect with voters. it's absurd.

somebody has to lose this election. if i was there, i wouldn't want to do it.

i've been in bed since wednesday afternoon.

i need to get up and eat some fruit.

i picked up a virus, although i'm not sure how. it might have been in the ambulance.

i've been pretty brutally sick.

unable to get out of bed sick. can't lift my arms to brush my teeth sick.

it is a virus because i'm hacking it out and it's shifting from brown to green.

meese is a word in canadianese.

are the americans considering invading canada?

we're bigger than they are.

it would serve no purpose and give the russians an excuse to invade canada at the same time. we don't want a canadian molotov-ribbentrop.

there's a section in their constitution about this. it's not crazy; they always intended to, but they never did.

what if they just invaded ontario, quebec, alberta and bc and said "fuck the rest, let 'em sleep with the meese"?

well, they'd better start patrolling the north, but i don't think canadians would tolerate it, and they'd have to deal with canadian militias forever.

it's a better idea to just try to be nice to us, which is why every president for decades has done that.

there's no genius master plan lurking behind the tariffs to crack and find some sneaky solution to.

trump is just really fucking dumb and he's apparently actually going to do this really fucking dumbass thing.

 "It's going to make us rich" - donald trump, who is the president of the most wealthy country in the history of the world, explaining why he for reals wants to implement tariffs.

i think we all forgot something.

trump is dumb.

the price tag on the border policy looks high, and it might have some ideas that will never get implemented, but we need to increase security to keep the americans out. that's correct.

i wouldn't expect it to stop the tariffs from happening, but we have to do it anyways.

it is clear that chrystia freeland wants to run for prime minister and is trying to build support in the party.

this woman is extraordinarily unpopular and has no chance whatsoever of winning an election.

i would like to call on her to resign her seat and move on. she had no qualifications whatsoever, and is the perfect example of an affirmative action hire that had no business in the job she was in. her protector has abandoned her. game over.

i'm concerned that she's going to take the party down with her. trudeau's in trouble, but he will likely retain core support; if they run freeland, the base walks and it's going to be a bloodbath. 

to be clear: freeland has no support in the core of the liberal voting base. that's a big difference when the party is collapsing. somebody like freeland could potentially coast to an election win if the party is popular, but when the party is not popular, she threatens to alienate the base.

maybe she can write an essay about her experiences and have it published in the globe and mail.

i'm building a genesis mega-discography on the other site, because it came up in the 'g' part of the listening sequence, and i was perturbed that i had holes in my genesis cd collection. i really wanted to listen to it all from the start to the end, and i got carried away. so, genesis now his eight core members, including anthony phillips, daryl stuermer (and his work with jean-luc ponty) and chester thompson (and his work with zappa and others). i'm also tracking key records produced by john anthony, david hentschell and hugh padgham. it's going to be a massive list.

like many people my age, i have an admiration for phil collins due to it being something that was a part of my childhood. that makes me very not gen x, which is unusual; i am usually overwhelmingly gen x, but gen x hated phil collins, and my interaction with phil collins records is very millenial, which is atypical for me, even if my preference is towards what collins did in the 70s and very early 80s rather than his work in the late 80s and early 90s. i of course knew that collins was massively unpopular. however, i started to realize some time in the early '10s that my phil collins posts on social media (which were always posted with a disclaimer, like a trigger warning - WARNING - PHIL COLLINS POST) were met more with a tolerant level of astonished giggliness rather than legitimate revile, as though i was sharing some kind of dark secret that said something unexpected about me, and was a dirty fetish that they, too, shared. you too, jessica? i never knew. after all, i shouldn't have been a phil collins. i was posting all of this cool, abstract underground music. and then....phil collins?

well, yeah. that's the thing; phil was involved in a lot of the most creative and substantive music of his era. phil wasn't a pin-up boy. phil was a great drummer and a great producer with perfect pitch that converted a series of 60s motown hits into something that was relevant in the 80s. his records sold because he was a very good pop musician, not because he was sexy. it is precisely phil's musical ability that makes him compelling and worth taking note of and that makes him of interest to anybody interested in substantive music of any type. as a music historian of serious music, i'd be making a tremendous mistake by ignoring phil collins.

so, i knew there was a secret cult following, a quiet phil underground that knew.

i was not aware of anything mentioned in this article:

https://www.city.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2021/05/how-phil-collins-became-cool-no-really

the mega super giant overwhelmingly genesis discography is being worked through and will come up on the np: page on the side within a few more days.

if you're a grocery store ceo or upper executive, i want you to get it through your skull that i don't "substitute" when you don't have an item i want, i go to another store to get it there instead.

this concept of "substitution" that you're aggressively pushing does not exist in real life or in the real life habits of consumers, it is a marketing construction that nobody wants. further, i don't remotely understand what the fuck you're even trying to say when you use ridiculous language like "store loyalty". what the fuck does that mean? that i'm going to overpay for something because i'm "loyal"? what? i think that what you're trying to actually say is that you think i'm fucking retarded.

drop the issue. if you don't have an item in stock, take it off your website. it's false advertising, you should be held accountable for that and somebody is going to do it if you don't stop with the bullshit of selling people something specific and then trying to deliver something else to them by using the bullshit orwellian excuse of "substitution".

the details are coming out in syria and it's a little different than the media narrative.

it actually wasn't the turkish-backed terrorist group that seized the capital from the north, it was an american-backed group that came in from the south, and the russians reacted by entirely bailing, apparently to avoid conflict with the us. what's worth noting is that the americans got there first with intent. they wanted to be in control, clearly, and wanted to take that away from the turks, who had to step back.

it follows that while it is the case that the turkish backed group, as an arm of a nato ally, has been installed as a puppet ruler, it is actually american boots on the ground that are in charge of the process. i don't know exact details, but i'd imagine they went for the palaces and the airports.

the israelis also came in from the south and the picture you put together is that the israelis and americans were trying to block the islamists from getting past a certain choke point, which is actually substantively to the north of damascus.

once the russians realized the americans went in, they flew assad to russia and stopped bombing the islamists. that was probably smart.

so, keep this in mind going forward: while it looks like the americans want to put the islamists in charge, which is exactly what happened in afghanistan, this doesn't actually appear to have been a turkish coup, after all. it's an american coup, and there are pentagon spooks sitting in syria right now calling the actual shots.

the russians and remnant syria forces might have been able to push back against turkish backed rebels, but they are not playing games with a direct american takeover. the americans came out of the desert. israel pushed in from the south. turkey came in from the north. the kurds got cut out.

this is consequently starting to look like syria no longer exists, and is going to get cut up, like libya.

that's right.

in ten years, our prime minster, darling of american media, has managed to accomplish one thing, which was to legalize marijuana.

his government has passed no other substantive legislation and has otherwise been indiscernible from the government it replaced, which was reviled by the centre-left by tha time it left office.

the party should now throw freeland out of the party and run somebody against her, preferably somebody who is actually a liberal, in the next election.

she was consistently the single most unpopular choice in opinion polls as a replacement leader, lagging behind everybody else in cabinet, people outside of cabinet and people who had already left the party. the party should distance itself from her as far as possible and carry out a scorched earth policy regarding everything she's ever said, ever done or any file she's ever touched. she's a right-wing loser.

maybe she can get a job working somewhere in the states.

i will say congratulations to dominic leblanc.

in turfing freeland, that's the second time he's defeated cancer. they should study this guy.

the canada post back to work legislation is the second time the liberals have attacked workers in the space of a few weeks.

voters who support collective bargaining should take note.

i'm not very excited about carney, but i'm ecstatic to get rid of freeland, who belongs somewhere on the "was wiped out in 1993" wing of the old conservative party and only ended up on the liberal party because trudeau wanted her to run for office.

the media is going to present this as the coronation of mark carney.

in fact, it's the beginning of a process for the centre to reclaim control of the liberal party away from the regressive right, who has become ascendant in the party over the trudeau years. carney will not be a successful politician and will not last long. he could lose a by-election and will have trouble keeping a seat.

how will we remember justin trudeau? like bill clinton.

trudeau was elected to undo and delete harper, as clinton was elected to undo reagan, but has instead been a caretaker prime minister. the history books will talk about the harper-trudeau government as a singular entity, as all that trudeau has done for the last ten years is sit on harper's policy shifts and wait to lose an election, so that the harper government can be extended by a third conservative government. trudeau's singular substantive piece of legislation was to legalize marijuana, which is an ideologically market libertarian right-wing position that appears to be a failed experiment that will be reversed within a few years. i hope that the government, in the end, launches a class action suit against the marijuana industry to try to pay for some of the medical costs we're incurring, such as increases in lung cancer and heart disease rates. 

liberals need to rise up and take back control of their party through a lengthy leadership process that is about foundational ideas and the soul of the party, which has literally been sold. 

if the party cannot renew itself from the centre-left, it may cease to exist, to the great benefit of the ndp and the great detriment of the actual left.

the liberal party of canada actually seriously intends to run a conservative banker for prime minister.

there's almost no possibility they're going to win the next election. granted. but they do have to concern themselves with their long term reputation.

the party is all in. they're actively recruiting him.

mr. trump, who appears to (bizarrely) read my blog,

you are right - syria is no friend of america. however, there are a lot of people in syria, in truth the majority of people in syria, that want to tilt towards the west. as an important part of the greek and roman world, syria has historically been a part of european culture and has generally had a western cultural identity. syria was unfortunately conquered by weird arab foreigners with strange customs in the 7th century as a consequence of the collapse of roman power in the region due to a bad round of the plague and a brutal war with iran (which has been there for a really long time), and has slowly been colonized by them over the last 1300 years, even when it has been a province of turkey, which has been the more frequent truth over the last 1000 years. syria fought very hard against the arab conquest and held off for centuries, but the region in general eventually fell to the turks (who were illegal immigrants from china that took over the region by sheer numbers and adopted the arab religion when they did). fundamentally, syrian culture does not tilt towards islam or towards arabism, it leans towards it's roman past. this is also true of lebanon, but it is not true of iraq, which was at times controlled by greeks and romans but has more often been controlled by iran and which is outside of the roman cultural sphere. this fact is a fundamental reason that lebanon and syria have seen so much turmoil since the fall of the turkish empire; it is stuck between a people that tilt westwards, and colonizing forces to it's south and east that are trying to control and assimilate them.

syria is not america's friend right now, but there are people in syria that want to be friends with america. it's important that a competent american administration find these friends of america - and friends of western civilization - in syria. they exist. they are plentiful. they need america to reach out a helping hand to aid them out of a mess, which is going to lead them into societal and civilizational collapse and result in the enforcement of barbarism through sharia law. the syrian people do not want that outcome, in aggregate. most syrians are secular, moderate and not very religious - like europeans are. that is why the foreign powers in the region want to prevent a democracy in syria, which is what assad was trying to create but wasn't able to due to the instability created by the civil war.

mr. trump, i want you to realize this truth and apply it more generally to your second term: a strong america should be looking not just to keep old friends, but also to meet new friends.

when the revolution comes in canada, and we tear the statues down, can we make sure to get the terry fox statues to winnipeg, as a basic start?

thanks.

this is true:

but, this is also true:

Trudeau lives in quiet luxury while Canadians
starve to death on the street, and the pharmaceutical-industrial complex
murders people by addicting them to opioids.

in canada, people get their heroin from doctors. that's the actual truth. it's not being imported from china, it's being prescribed by emergency rooms.

i've seen this first hand; i've been pushed opiates in the er room. the nurses act like low level street dealers. it's a horrific racket. i had to physically push my way out of the er room by shoving nurses out of the way while ripping diodes off of me out of legitimate fear of involuntarily being injected with an addictive substance that would functionally end my life as a coherent being.

there have been studies, and the statistics are truly depressing. something like 80% of those street level addicts were prescribed opiates by their doctors, first. it's the health care professionals, themselves, that are responsible for the problem.

then they argue we need to treat addiction like a medical issue. 

yeah.

exactly. right?

just say no to your doctors, kids.

the americans have a huge military force in syria. 

these islamic extremists are now attacking the kurds. they appear to be well trained. if they succeed, they're going to release the terrorists the kurds are holding.

this justifies the use of american air power to attack the rebels with, but we're certainly not going to see it from dhimmi joe. i don't think trump is interested, but that means that he won't care if israel does it.

this is an opportunity for israel to develop an ally in the region and they should offer to provide air support for the kurds, as they are fighting off these thugs.

if i were israel, i would be seeking to physically take control of the transit routes out of iraq to prevent the movement of weapons into syria, lebanon and gaza. i would put a focus on taking control of the entry points at the iraq-syria border.

the region is mostly desert, and largely unpopulated, besides with isis barbarians. i think that would be justifiable as self-defense, and largely harmless in terms of inflicting actual damage on anybody worth caring about.

equality means equality.

that means you lose equally when you deserve to lose because you're a weak candidate, that you don't get special treatment or have a space put aside for you due to quotas or affirmative action.

that means you have to fight with the big kids and be held to the same standards and win on the merits and not cry it's not fair when you don't.

the reality is that trudeau's comments are actually extremely sexist, that he has a long history of chauvinistic behaviour and attitudes and that his policies are rooted in the premise of giving a helping hand to the weaker sex out of noblesse oblige, when he's not just cynically trying to get laid (and we might not have to wait too much longer to get the stories about that, if you really want to hear them).

canada has run dozens of women for party leaders of the major parties and dozens for prime minister as leaders of smaller parties and not a single one of them has ever come remotely close to winning, and there's not a single case where it was because they were women.

there was a female caretaker pm in canada in 1993 named kim campbell for a few months after the resignation of an extremely unpopular prime minister (brian mulroney) before the end of his mandate, which is not that dissimilar to what just happened in the united states except that biden never actually resigned, and this is what happened:

was that an affront to female progress?

no. she was a member of an unpopular government, she ran a terrible campaign, she made a number of stupid comments and voters threw the bitch out.

there is no use in repeating my analysis of the recent american election. there's a search bar and there's an index tree.

i don't care much about canada, as a country. i'm not a nationalist. canada is a colonial construction of a dying empire, and probably a collapsing failed state.

but it's impossible to rally the troops around a leader that is, objectively speaking, a complete piece of shit.

the canadian political class is so astoundingly stupid.

it apparently honestly thinks trump is going to reverse the tariffs if we stop fentanyl from entering the united states. the whole point of the demand being absurd and undefinable is that it can't be met.

the reason trump's demands are impossible to define is because they're intended to be impossible to meet.

then, they talk about how america is our bestest friend, and they couldn't possibly hurt us. 

the reality is that the americans want to beat us up and steal our lunch money, and everybody wants to beat trudeau up and steal his lunch money, because he's such a fucking prick. he's putting a giant target on the country by refusing to resign and by continuing to be such an annoying douche bag everywhere he goes.

flying down to florida and trying to talk trump out of it was the dumbest thing he could have possibly done, as it broadcasted immense weakness and told them from the start "you can push me around". so, they are, and they will.

the liberal party needs to immediately shift tactics and present a leader to the world that most people don't want to beat the shit out of, and that leader needs to be able to quickly rebrand the country and then go stand up to donad trump.

canada is not a country of upper class effete loser douche bags, we're a country of lumberjacks that don't care. we have the united states infiltrated via the nhl and via the comedy network. don't mess with us, bitch.

trudeau and his party are probably going to finish in third place in the next election and could get wiped out everywhere except quebec.

i don't like the narrative of him being beaten up by elon musk and having his lunch money stolen. that's bad for the country.

the party needs to send him away somewhere.

there were three motions scheduled for today; i wanted a stay for a judicial review of the eviction, and i was responding to a motion to declare the lawyer vexatious, whereas they were trying to quash the application and the review, and prevent me from filing further in court.

i don't think either of us will be declared vexatious. that was what i actually wanted.

the motion to quash wasn't heard because it wasn't confirmed.

the only thing seriously heard was the stay motion, and i don't know whether i got it or not, but it means the appeal is safe, regardless, and that, even if i can't get a stay on the review, the stay on the appeal should allow both the appeal and the review to move forward, in the absence of the quash.

the justice might throw the whole thing out, but i doubt it.

it looks like i'm safe for the winter.

i think.

the justice appeared to acknowledge that evicting me without compensating me would be absurd, which is what the adjudicator didn't do because he was an asshole. i suspect that if the justice does cancel all of this then she will give me sufficient notice and perhaps some amount of compensation, which is in some way sufficient as it will allow me to plan an escape route, which is what i'm not currently able to do. this is what i thought would happen in the first place, that the board would say "there's no serious grounds for eviction, but the tenancy is toxic, so jessica should be given some amount of money to leave, and that'll be that.", and i would have in fact accepted that. that would be improper, technically, because the quash motion was cancelled, but she might claim discretion.

worst case, i think, is that i get ordered out for jan 1st or feb 1st.

but i suspect this is going to a hearing in april, rather than november, and i think she might give me costs, which would help a lot.

my cunning plan to extricate myself from this hellhole faces a stress test tomorrow.

they apparently won't let me make my case in the court because they seem to realize i'm going to change the laws. the gatekeeper bitch has gone quiet on me, but i'm not convinced she's disengaged. there was supposed to be a hearing tomorrow, but the lawyer didn't confirm the motion, so it got cancelled. what should happen is that it should be rescheduled, which probably means rescheduled to march or even april.

if that happens, i'll be here until either november occurs or i get moved out via subsidized housing, whichever happens first, and the answer is almost certainly the former. my cunning plan will have worked flawlessly. however, it it needs to get through this stress test first, and then i need to win an attempt to quash in the spring. 

there is some possibility that the judge might just cancel everything instead; that would be wrong, but judges are sometimes wrong, and the silence of the gatekeeping bitch is worrying me.

i will either have very good news tomorrow afternoon, and be safe here for the winter, or very frustrating news, and need to pack up and get out on short notice, which i'll probably be able to barely do.

it's remarkably hypocritical that the democrats are frightened of the bunch of harmless nuts that stormed washington on jan 6, but are celebrating the bloodthirsty islamist barbarians that recently stormed the government in syria.

trump should not pardon the islamist rioters in syria, and especially not the ones on the most wanted terrorist list. rather, he should put sanctions on syria.

guantanomo joe wants to criticize syria for human rights abuses. right.

it's not that syria didn't have some problems, it's that they were mostly tied to the previous ruler (who died 25 years ago) and that the reforms that his son brought  in were actually extremely liberalizing, leaving syria as probably the most moderate muslim state in the entire middle east. the turks, iranians, egyptians and saudis are all infinitely worse than syria has been in decades.

worse, syria was a rendition site for us torture during the iraq war. that is, a lot of the basis of the criticism comes directly from cia torture sites in syria.

i understand that this is a proxy war and that what actually just happened was a turkish-backed coup in syria, which is only possible with nato oversight (and russian disengagement). it looks like israel is going to make a mess of the situation, which is what assad was trying to avoid, and which is sort of required. these terrorists are bad guys, and at least the israelis seem have their heads out of their asses about it.

joe's analysis is just not of the current era, or of the current century. biden unquestionably green-lighted this, and he no doubt did it because harris lost the election. it's a last hurrah. yet, like so many of the horrible foreign policy decisions he made, it's through the filter of somebody that never let go of the cold war.

the younger assad is probably the least ruthless dictator anybody's seen in the region in the modern era, at least. the language coming from the white house and propaganda in line with it is not consistent with reality, and largely delusional in terms of what assad was and where he was trying to take the country, which was actually into the european union, in the very long run.

now, syria will be lucky to avoid a fate different than afghanistan went through in the 80s, and i can only wish them luck. they'll need it.

instead of fighting the last battle of the cold war, biden should have been blowing up the existential threat developing in yemen, which he's completely avoided dealing with because he's obsessed with settling scores with the russians.

unfortunately, israel might be the only power left that can save syria from collapsing into afghan-like backwardsness and, in fact, that might have been the plan.

i hope that israel takes these fuckers on directly and wipes them out.

unlike the coast of lebanon, damascus is outside of any reasonable sphere of ancient israel and, in invading damascus the israelis would be pushing it beyond any acceptable point, but i'd rather have the jews seize the city and enforce some modern concept of law than see it governed by thugs out of the back of a koran.

over the upcoming weeks and months, the reality in syria is going to resemble the initial taliban takeover over afghanistan. if you have any buddhist statutes in syria, get them out while you can.

i would hope that the canadian consulate would indicate it's willing to evacuate people, especially women, from the country while they can get out, as one of the oldest centres of civilization in the world collapses into unmitigated barbarism.

this is a sad day for syrians, a sad day for the region and a sad day for the world.

the loss of syria to brutal muslim barbarians is another black mark on biden's deplorable foreign policy, and let us hope it is the last pathetic mistake made by this horrible administration.

the people that just took over syria are a turkish proxy group, but they are an off shoot of al qaeda and morally equivalent to isis. isis basically just won in syria. 

this brutal takeover of the syrian state by backwards barbarians is a horrific catastrophe for syria and for the syrian people and will potentially put an end to a relatively moderate period of rule by a secular state and usher in decades of oppression by a brutally backwards theocratic state, similar to the despotic barbarism that rules over saudi arabia.

the west should be thoroughly embarrassed that the russians had to prop up the last vestige of civilization in the region for years, and in the end had to sacrifice it to protect it's core interests in europe. 

everybody in the entire world is worse off for this disaster.

these barbarians are worse than the taliban, and the syrian people should expect an outcome worse than taliban rule. the syrian state itself, under islamic rule, will unquestionably become a source of terrorism in the broader region.

i hope that there are immediate sanctions placed on these barbarians, and i hope the russians haven't completely abandoned the people of syria to the depravity of islamic fundamentalism, which they do not want, and which is a fate worse than nuclear war.

fuck you joe biden. may you rot in hell, with your worthless dead children.

yes, i understand that trudeau has been trying to push older white men out of government.

clearly, that was stupid and needs to be undone. they need to reach out. 

trump is going to treat doug ford's fat ass the same way he treated chris christie's fat ass. bad, bad choice.

stupid choice. he'll get his ass handed to him. they won't respect him.

trump himself is not a conservative. he's going to get along better with an older white liberal.

send bob rae. send marc garneau. send ralph goodale.

the liberals have no deficit of people they can send.

stephen harper would be a better pick than doug ford if you want to actually get something done.

i think the puerto ricans would have something to say about canada being the 51st state.

that's twice, donald.

you got one more strike, and you don't want to know what happens when you strike out on puerto rico.

it would be terrible for canada, and the best thing that could happen to the united states, as the republicans would never get those electoral votes, ever.

the liberals should not pick a female right now and especially not a young one. maybe later.

the best way to deal with donald trump is to send an older white male down there, like a ralph goodale or a marc garneau. unfortunately, the liberal party has purged itself of older white people recently, in the dumbest destruction of talent this side of the russian revolution.

trump will not like polievre either. 

the liberals actually have a chance to one up the opposition by putting an older person in power, but i don't expect that they will.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/5-things-we-learned-about-melanie-joly-in-nyt-profile-that-declares-her-top-contender-to-replace-trudeau

in order to meet our nato funding requirements and chase off the mob tactics that come in the protection racket we're stuck in, we should spend the money on nato flak jackets for the polar bears and train them to attack russians on command.

the russians may laugh at us.

"you think russia don't know bear? aaaaahahahaha."

but it's the best possible defense. truly.

now, if we can teach the polar bears taekwondo on top of it, putin would be completely fucked.

we'd have to fly in some grizzlies and black and brown bears to meet diversity requirements and stop the polar bears from becoming a nazi paramilitary, which is what is going to happen with climate change anyways, they'll all back-cross to whence they came, and we'll have a race of hybrid bears ready to bite.

as the bears move in to russia, they'll need to capture the young russian bears to train them, in a janissery-like tactic, to turn the russian bear against itself.

canada doesn't have a migrant issue because swimming across the arctic ocean is too hard. you've got the cold, the polar bears - it might be a fun adventure if disneyfied, but for most it's way too hard when you could just get to brazil first, or if you're already in latin america to start (as most are).

however, what canada does have is a lax visa issue. it is too easy to legally enter canada, so that the actual bad guys that have a few brains tend to use it is a backdoor.

we consequently don't have caravans of desperate people looking to eat, but we do have terrorists and other criminals using canada as a way to sneak in. that's not what trump said, and there's little evidence he even really cares (he seems to actually legitimately want the tariffs. this isn't a bluff. he just wants tariffs because he thinks they'll bring back jobs and this is how he bypasses congress to do it.), but we need to do this for ourselves, anyways.

canada is currently changing it's policy on immigration due to realizing we're dealing with the effects of overpopulation in the cities. some kind of policy to incentivize people to settle in smaller towns should be tried to try to get people to spread out more. we also need to realize that we let a lot of bad people in because we're not checking because we think it's racist and we need to re-evaluate that position. it's not racist to ask if a person's religious views may lead them to uncanadian beliefs or activities that may pose a threat to the people around them.

https://san.com/cc/suspected-terrorist-arrested-by-federal-agents-at-northern-us-border/

looks pretty similar to last year, if you ask me; statistically, within the margin of error.

where i am, in windsor, you never see freezing overnight lows in february and rarely see them beyond the first week of january. we get a week, at most, of what canadians would call winter, right during the last week of december.

we skipped it last year and it's looking like we're going to skip it this year, too.

the shift in energy northwards means that if you're north of sudbury, or even north of barrie, i'd get a shovel, but you probably already have one.

i'm also putting down a warning for ottawa: you may not get to skate again at all this year, and this spring is going to be brutal. get your sandbags down now.

https://weather.com/en-CA/weather/tenday/l/Windsor+Ontario?canonicalCityId=76c141061d15e7f8d2c987004795c229983119d19f53c3ee179e9983c2afbffa

this is horrific.

hts are bloodthirsty terrorists opposed by 80-90% of the syrian public, which fully backs assad and vehemently opposes jihadist rule. hts is also a proxy of the turkish government.

for the turks to arm and train these barbarians and send them into syria like a mercenary group in order to invade and pacify, and then absurdly claim that assad is oppressing his own people, when the truth is that the russians then have to come in to protect the population from the turkish-backed terrorists, is outrageous, but it is the level of propaganda being spewed by western media around this war for years, now.

i don't know if trump is going to actually shift direction here or not. i strongly doubt he understand the subtleties or what nominating gabbard actually means; he's just rewarding a loyalist. however, the entity that is at war with his own people is not assad, it's erdogan, and the country that's in need of regime change, by a coup if necessary, is the turks.

as mentioned, it would be nice if this turkish mercenary group could remove hezbollah from syria, first. i would just get out of their way and clean up the mess after. the west, however, should be looking at the long run, and it is more leaders like assad that want a western style democracy and want to tilt westwards, not less.

syria is more like lebanon than iraq, but it's somewhere in between. they don't want to be ruled out of the back of a koran by islamic thugs, they want something broadly european in government, and the only party offering that is assad. that is why assad, despite his failings, commands massive levels of popular support in syria.

https://apnews.com/article/syria-insurgents-aleppo-iran-iraq-militia-12341a6c15a772e207a1b5513c11f8fd

gaza already looks something like hell, but i actually agree with trump's basic position.

the us-israel position from day one should have always been to reverse the negotiation process by threatening to obliterate gaza unless they release the hostages immediately, rather than trying to negotiate.

assad is not aligned with hezbollah or iran, but syria has become a russian protectorate and in the process has become unable to remove hezbollah. the israeli strikes on hezbollah are in assad's long term interests and he no doubt is in full support of them.

the capitalist disinformation around syria is tremendous and has been since the initial bullshit claim that assad attacked a peaceful demonstration, when he was bombing saudi-backed isis rebels.

what happened in syria (which is a military junta that the russians have taken control of since about 2015 or so) is that assad actually designed a democratic constitution and was going to put it up for a referendum, and the saudis vetoed it by launching a western-backed invasion. remember that the united states cannot tolerate democracy in the middle east, which makes them a great ally of the saudis; assad threatened to allow democracy in a state that is actually secular and has historically had a mix of christians and muslims and that got him marked for death.

assad's father was actually an ally of saddam hussein and syria was aligned against iran in a series of wars in the 20th century.

when the turks realized the saudis were going into syria, they had to push back because syria is a buffer state on the turkish border. the turks do not want a direct border with the saudis, they want some space. that, and the turks figure that syria has a long history tied to constantinople, and not much of one tied to mecca. the turks, somewhat correctly, would consider syria in it's sphere, not in the arab sphere.

what developed out of that initial conflict between the saudis and turks over syria became a complicated proxy war and, when it slowed down, the iranian proxy of hezbollah wandered into the mess, to nobody's wishes. everybody wants hezbollah out, even the russians.

we'll have to see how this develops, but my initial perception is that the turks and israelis made a deal for turkey to enter the ongoing war on the side of israel by invading northern syria, which will also create a problem for the russians in ukraine. israel cannot conduct a ground war in syria, but turkey can. ukraine and syria are actually the same war; this actually becomes a war between russia and turkey.

the russians might want to step back and let the turks clear hezbollah out before launching a counter-offensive, which would be assad's preferred outcome. the kurds will be sitting and waiting to come in if required.

i want trump to try to pry assad away from russia and realign syria towards the west, then tell the saudis to back off and let syria be free to design it's own government, but that is unlikely to happen given turkey's nato membership and saudi influence in washington. we will instead be told lies about assad, like we were about saddam hussein.

assad's father was a tyrant, but the younger assad, who was not groomed for power, is a mild-mannered figurehead that grew up in britain. he has western inclinations. these should be leveraged.

we get a cm of snow in december and the meteorologists think climate change is over. the depth of resistance to reality is baffling.

as i suggested, the storm track has been pushed to the north. the detroit-quebec corridor used to get nailed by snow in la nina. growing up in ottawa, i remember 50 foot snow banks and trudging to school in the blizzard. that just happened in thunder bay, instead, while i think it's going to be raining most of this week in ottawa.

it's actually very mild here in windsor, with temperatures hovering around freezing, and small amounts of rain in the forecast.

what trudeau just did is equivalent to walking into a tiger cage and asking the tiger not to eat you.

it's valuable to compare the outcomes.

mexico called trump and told him to fuck off and it looks like he did. trudeau comes to trump and begs like a pathetic slave and the result is that trump told him he's going to get hit.

the canadian government is very stupid, and that's no doubt what trump deduced. trump is a bully. all bullies seek victims that are weak. we advertised weakness to the bully. 

the most basic rule with bullies is that you have to stand up to them, which is what mexico did, which was the smart approach. we cowered to the bully, like fools, and he punched us in the face.

we need a government willing to stand up to donald trump. that's how you deal with him, and then he folds like a cheaply constructed hotel, like most bullies do.

the other thing to keep in mind is that canada has more to steal than mexico does. canadians think we have "shared values", but that's not what trump sees. trump sees easily plunderable wealth that can be stolen with minimal effort. what the mexicans have is labour to exploit. it's not the same thing.

we need to get our heads out of our asses and stop with the fantasy about platitudes and friendship and deal with the reality of an aggressive actor declaring war on us, before trump pulls the heads out and sticks his cock in.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/30/justin-trudeau-donald-trump-mar-a-lago