they should label it as marketing.

why exactly are people afraid of this?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/pigs-crispr-gene-editing-9.7059040

the hubris of thinking you can change the spelling of words in foreign languages is truly something to behold and reflective of the reasons that the turkish dictator will eventually be hung on a telephone pole by his own people.

i also want to tell the turkish government that they have a lot of arrogance and no grounds or right to tell english-speakers how to spell the name of their country in english. the english believe in democracy, sultan erdogan, and we will determine our own spellings, not you.

but, if you'd like, i can reciprocate by suggesting the following spelling of canada in turkish:

siktir git

the composition of the board of peace is mostly not important, as everybody is going to vote the way trump tells them, which is why they're there.

i think that gaza needs local government, not an international oversight body.

however, who has a real role in an international oversight body like this board of peace?

- egypt, obviously

- israel, obviously

- the british have a role to play due to the british mandate and the suez canal

- the french should purposefully not be invited as they have no role to play in gaza, in lebanon, in syria or anywhere else in the middle east

- no other western european country should be invited

- the united states needs to be on the board

- canada should not be invited

- no country in latin america, and especially not nazi-aligned argentina, should be invited

- iran should be invited in principle, but an iranian opposition group should represent them, not the current government

- greece should be invited

- italy should be invited

- turkey should be invited

- these are the four stable historical powers in the region

- jordan should be invited

- lebanon should be invited

- syria should be invited in principle, but a syrian opposition group should represent syria, not the current government

- saudi arabia should be invited in principle, but an opposition group should represent them, not the current governent

- no other arab country should be invited 

so that is:

- the governments of the united states, egypt, israel, the uk, greece, italy, turkey, jordan and lebanon and democratic opposition groups representing the iranian, syrian and saudi arabian governments.

fwiw, trump is objectively correct in his statements about afghanistan.

the nato and un mission, which canada joined in the un capacity first and the nato capacity second, was not intended as an offensive mission to wipe out the taliban so much as it was intended to hold the capital and rebuild the government. the problem that the un sought to address was not the elimination of the taliban but the absence of a government in kabul. it was primarily a peacekeeping mission.

there were combat missions under american direction but they weren't the reason that most countries went to afghanistan and many were reluctant to participate in them.

while the terrain is difficult, and that was a reason that many countries were reluctant, it is unlikely that the taliban could have withstood a direct, full assault by nato countries, and many observers pointed that out at the time, with comments like that nato is fighting with one arm tied behind their back. one justification i heard by nato at the time was that nato found it more useful to study the taliban by intercepting their communications with the intent to subvert and co-opt them than it did to just blow them up.

there was no proxy group like the kurds in the region to do the heavy fighting on the ground.

that doesn't mean people weren't maimed or injured in the defensive capacity, but the fact is that they weren't there to conquer the country, and that is why they didn't.

i've been sick this week with an upper respiratory infection that has hurt enough to knock me out. it's freezing outside, and the tenants directly above me seem to have a weird aversion to indoor heat, so i've had to compensate with indoor heaters. they do finally have the heat on and my heaters wouldn't work very well otherwise, but they are also exactly what i need to sleep the virus off.

i don't understand this idea of turning the heat down to sleep. at all. when the temperature falls below 20, it jolts me awake like a splash of cold water, and especially when it's dry. i find it impossible to sleep in low humidity. i sleep better when the temperature is above 25 and the air is a little moist, which it is because they keep trying to cool it down upstairs. i kind of like this. 

so, i'm feeling a bit better.

i have some work to finish this weekend and should get back to normal life next week, although i'll need to wait for the cold snap to pass before i'm able to do anything at all.

as i stated before, canada really has a claim to all of the louisiana purchase, and anywhere else where there were french settlers, although we might face some resistance down the mississippi.

once we do regain control of major french canadian colonies like detroit, chicago, saint louis and nouvelle orleans, we can rename the gulf of mexico to the gulf of canada and shut down the refineries on the river and the wells off the coast.

the fact that lake champlain is not in canada is a national tragedy.

whaddya say, vermont? you wanna be canadian?

what about the other states?

- michigan's productive capacity would be incredibly useful to canada and something that should be a strategic objective for ottawa, especially if canada seeks to move past the carbon economy. i think michigan would be the most likely state to immediately vote to join canada, if offered. almost everybody i've spoken to in detroit would rather be canadian.

- annexing minnesota, wisconsin and illinois would give canada stronger control over the great lakes, which are likely to increase in value due to climate change. the northwest passage will probably never happen, but year round shipping through the st lawerence seaway is a realistic outcome of climate change.

- vermont and new york would give canada control of major financial institutions and global governing bodies

- cascadia would give canada control of the the entire western seaboard, and allow it to enforce a total tanker ban and other environmental protections all the way down, as well as give it complete control of trade in and out of asia

if washington thinks it's ok for alberta to vote to secede from canada, surely it would have to agree that california could vote to secede from the united states, too.

see, i think we're doing this wrong. the federal government is trying to focus on "national unity".

if the americans are going to go after alberta like this, why shouldn't canada go after california/oregon/washington, michigan, minnesota, illinois and new york?

they can have alberta, as far as i'm concerned. alberta is just slowing us down with backwards politics and last century technology.

i'm strongly in favour of the united states of canada. let's do it.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/we-should-let-them-come-down-into-the-u-s-trump-cabinet-member-weighs-in-on-alberta-separatism-9.7058082

rich people can be stupid if they want. if there's no tariffs, that should force grocers to cut prices on imports to move them at cost or less, which is good for poor people.

so, buy canadian if you want - it'll both make american imports cheaper and boost the cpi, which will increase the minimum wage.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/why-buy-canadian-wave-food-090022476.html

if they show up and build casinos and resorts for westerners and tell the palestinians to live in shanty towns behind fences, the palestinians will just lose again, and will just lash out further, with more xenophobia and more hatred.

the basic reality is that contemporary global capitalism creates winners and losers and the gazans are amongst the biggest losers in the world. when you lose economically, it generates xenophobia and hatred towards the "other", which you blame for your own failures. in this case, it's the muslim failure to adjust to modernity that causes them to lash out at the jews for beating them at everything, over and over again.

that's clear enough, but decades of losing means that the hatred in the palestinian population is so deep that it's become cultural. they've repeatedly elected xenophobic groups that want to destroy the winners with bombs and guns and they've been repeatedly blown up in response, but they won't accept the simple empirical reality that they're losers and they've lost.

now, the world wants to give them "independence", as though that means something in the global economy. it doesn't. it's stupidity. but it's the stupidity of the insistence on independence that will force them to continue to lose, and they will continue to lash out at the world around them so long as they continue to lose.

kushner can build as many towers as he wants, but what he needs to do to stop the local population from blowing them up is give them jobs, first. what gaza needs more than anything else is jobs. and if they won't do that, or concede they can't, the only solution is to replace them.

this is obviously a daunting barrier for any realistic path to autonomy in gaza.

but there's no clear way around it.

nobody knows how to build an economy in gaza, and reconstruction, in itself, isn't it.

who buys these houses? who rents these apartments?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/25/un-report-80-per-cent-of-gaza-inhabitants-relied-on-international-aid-before-war

where trump is right in principle about gaza is understanding that they need development, not aid. fascism breeds on desperation. so long as gazans have no way to survive but via handouts, they will look for somebody to blame, and hamas will find recruits. the economy here is not an afterthought to peace, it's a precondition for it; it's less about stopping the war to create investment and more about creating investment to end the war. 

the problems are with the actors on the ground. it's the palestinians themselves that are going to prevent this from happening.

first, you need to blow up the handouts industry. investors and corporations that profit off of foreign aid seek to maintain dependency, and it's the dependency that's the colonialism, to the extent it exists. you need to get them out of there.

second, is finding a market for the local economy. it's too small to be self-sustaining. if gaza is to make something, who buys it? when john kerry took a look at this, he tried to convince israel to buy the stuff, but they wouldn't. israel wanted to make it's own stuff and didn't see a role for the palestinians in performing labour. there are too many people there to survive solely in hospitality and tourism. who buys it? egypt? europe? it's not clear that there's a clear market that can sustain the region. gaza has not historically been a state, it's historically been a province, and the basic dollars and cents of what the region can and might produce as an autonomous region are daunting. the premise of gazan autonomy is economically dubious to nonsensical.

third is dealing with the reality that the palestinians are going to accuse anybody building large towers in the region as being "agents of babylon" and "zionists" and start blowing them up. the heartbreaking reality is that the loudest opponent to gazan reconstruction in the way imagined will be the palestinians themselves, and they will declare war on the construction industries for being satanic, jewish and unislamic.

this is the reason many voices have tried to point to the need to de-nazify palestine as a prerequisite for any workable solution short of an eventual islamo-fascist theocracy. trump is claiming he's going to "wipe out" hamas if they don't disarm. he's right, but good luck with that. is he going to flood the tunnels? bomb them with bunker busters? israel's been trying to figure this out for years. 

nobody wants to deal with the facts on the ground, which are that the people that live there want to kill everybody and erect a fascist theocracy. it's hard to see how trump's plan is going anywhere without starting with an actual genocide first, in ways israel never truly considered. and, this might be one of those rare historical examples where wiping a people out is justified and the best course of action.