the immense threat to global peace posed by a regional military alliance in the middle east is the reason the united states, and the british before them, have spent the last 200+ years creating conflicts between the differing regional actors, and a major reason why a policy of supporting the kurds was drawn up in the first place. an alliance between the saudis and turks puts religious and cultural minorities in the region at extreme risk. the jews are going to need to step in and protect people, and then you have a world war developing, and the kurds end up a central part of it anyways.

trump's utterly anachronistic, out of touch and irrational mccarthyite fear of communism is leading to completely terrible policy decisions. a functioning american hegemon would not have allowed this to happen, but the idiot in the white house seems to be encouraging it.

i have stated myself that coordination between the turks, arabs and pakistanis is the necessary alternative to supporting a kurdish uprising in iran. it's one or the other, and if the turks don't want the kurds, they'd better pony up.

but that's not the same thing as a mutual defence agreement, which is extremely dangerous to global peace.

fuck. 

it would be a lot easier and better to just arm the goddamned kurds. trump is such a fucking piece of shit. let's get this fucking over with.

this looks like an axis of evil, if you ask me. i've been warning for years that the third world war will be fought against a belligerent saudi arabia, lashing out against the world when the oil dries up. pakistan is unstable and extremist, and the turks are a dangerous menace to global freedom. these are three of the most unfree, most authoritarian and most dangerous countries on earth, and having them align poses a serious threat to american hegemony in the region. american strategy should be to divide and conquer.

https://www.trtworld.com/article/034401144329

the most important thing we can do to save canada is not fighting the yankees, it's building climate change infrastructure. florida will sink into the ocean, california will burn down, texas will become uninhabitably hot. the american problem will work itself out. but we can survive if and only if we build the infrastructure to protect us from what's coming, and we'd better get on it immediately.

there's actually a bit of an opportunity here for massive keynesian spending on climate transition rather than war. the americans are tariffing us exactly at the point where we need massive building projects. we need fire fighting infrastructure. we need flood infrastructure. we need seawalls. etc. we can save the economy by using government spending to build climate change infrastructure. i thought  we were going to do that in 2015, with the climate change branch of the bank of canada, but it turned out to be a joke. we're 10, 20, 30 years behind. it's a race against a climate catastrophe every bit as frightening as the nazis building the bomb first.

no. no. no. the media does not understand the reality of where we are in the climate crisis. 

the reality is that even if we had a Magic Button we could press that would stop all emissions tomorrow, we would still be in for 30-50 years of worsening climate change. this is the nature of how emissions build up, there's a lag. the fires we're experiencing today are the effects of emissions from 50 years ago. this is going to get worse for the entire lives of most people currently alive, and there's actually no policy that exists that can reverse it, except schemes to pull carbon out of the air, which are currently science fiction. the climate scientists told us in like 1999 that we were at the end of the road with this.

the ipcc itself doesn't even talk about reducing emissions anymore, it talks almost strictly about mitigation.

yes, we still need to get emissions under control. but, the days where governments could prevent climate change with emission policies ended 20+ years ago. this narrative has no basis in reality. the idea that we can stop this by reducing emissions is now in the realm of magical thinking. no, we cannot.

canada must dramatically increase funding for mitigation immediately, which includes resources for fighting fires and managing forests. the fires, the floods, etc are not preventable. they will happen. we cannot stop them anymore. it's way, way too fucking late for that.

banning us booze was not a rational reaction. if individual canadians want to boycott us booze that's up to them, but pulling it from the shelf does nothing to advance the national interest, it's just foolishly stomping on the elephant's foot. the sectoral tariffs are dependent on tariffs on us and should be tied to reciprocity. the americans have aggressively indicated that they are not going to remove the sectoral tariffs no matter what, so canada really has no choice but to retaliate. the americans are delusional to expect canada not to retaliate on a reciprocal basis; it's the booze tariffs that are irrational and don't accomplish anything except the feeling of standing up to a bully, who is still stealing your lunch money.

however, allowing american dairy into canada that does not meet canadian health and safety regulations would be a catastrophe and a fail and would be so devastating that i would call on the government to splinter and for an immediate vote of non-confidence to be held. that would be an abrogation of canadian sovereignty that would not be acceptable, and canadians should react by dumping american milk into the great lakes.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-u-s-booze-bans-trade-negotiations-9.7299529

i've been sleeping a lot the last few days. i am pretty sick, extremely stuffed up and with a very sore throat, after scrubbing the floors. i got the smell out of here, at least. and the floors are almost entirely cleaned up.

the steam cleaner came in wednesday morning, and i also bought a small amount of additional groceries with the leftover sum and put the shop vac on hold until the trillium comes in this morning or tomorrow morning (it's unpredictable when the pay date is monday, either saturday or friday, usually saturday) so i could get a number of kitchen finishing things, instead. one of the big things i have left to do is find a way to store my pots and pans. i have usually used the bottom of the stove, but this house has issues with pests, so that's not such a good idea. i want to get the items out of there and was looking at ideas like installing shelves or a rack with hooks. i found a good idea on the new amazon haul, namely three adhesive magnetic strips with a series of 18 magnetic hooks attached to the magnetic strips. the magnets are supposed to be rated for 80 pounds, so they should easily hold pots, pans, spatulas, tongs, etc so long as the magnetic strip itself doesn't get yanked from the wall. i'll try to balance it a little. this will get these things out of drawers and open up space in them and make things tidier and more organized altogether. i ended up getting a number of other necessary kitchen items while i was at it, but that's round one and round two is coming soon.

after sleeping wednesday afternoon, i woke up to a phantom doorbell ring and and a nasty ground loop in my video doorbell system. after disassembling the doorbell, i found the short in the mic, which was grounding on the housing. i also uncovered several signs that the system had been tampered with and it was humming because they reassembled it poorly.

over the last few days, i've also tried to keep an eye on the laundry to figure out if it looks like it's being used as an access point and i've seen enough evidence in terms of items being moved around to conclude it probably has. i'm wondering if the purpose of the ghost doorbell rings might be to draw me out, so somebody can drug my food. i feel like i have to seal up the remaining sections of the laundry, including the access to the furnace.

i decided last night that, because i was sick, i should not be attempting to lose weight by not eating for days at a time but should rather make smaller meals and try to hold steady at 139 until i'm feeling better, then let it drop and continue from there. so, i made a tomato sandwich to use up some bacon and will have small amounts of salami melts more frequently until i'm over this. i then essentially slept all day and woke up feeling terrible and have been reading the news for the day.

these frequent distractions are annoying but real life.

i need to get back on track and try to finish what i was doing over the next day or two.