unexpectedly, i'm working on some new music this weekend. like, completely new.

i've become aware that somebody upstairs (i think my landlord) is trying to hypnotize me in order to detransition me. this is really out there, crazy stuff from my perspective, but a google search has indicated that sleep hypnosis is something that an assortment of quacks and lunatics have attempted over the years to "cure" "homosexuality". sleep hypnosis is not the only thing they're doing, but it's one of them.

they are trying to enforce a gay male identity on me. frankly, i think being transgendered is more sane than being gay and that if we are to clinicize one of these two things we ought to label homosexuality a mental illness before we label transgenderism one (after all, transgendered people generally come out of the process as straight in their preferred gender identities, and not queer), which is leading me to conclude that this person is more on the rad fem or greenwald part of the spectrum, rather than some kind of religious fundamentalist, and that is consistent with what i've been experiencing. you assume you're dealing with a christian or a muslim (a muslim is a more likely fundamentalist nowadays, in canada...) when you run into religionist bullshit, but the evidence consistently points to feminism as the religion that's driving this, rather than anything abrahamic, although there clearly have been muslims and arabs upstairs doing the actual dirty work.

i'm simply not a gay man. i've never had sex with a gay man. i've never dated a gay man. i've had kind of sort of relationships with straight men, mostly before i realized what was happening and kind of stopped myself from falling into it, but i've never had anything resembling any kind of gay encounter. i don't even have any gay friends. i am trans, but i don't call myself gay or queer and would aggressively reject being called homosexual in any sense. they're just wrong. but, they seem to think being gay is normal and acceptable and being trans is some kind of illness, when i think all evidence suggests the opposite, and that leads me to the conclusion that they would have to, themselves, be gay. my landlords were indeed presented to me as lesbians.

so, i've been recording myself sleeping to catch them, but they seem to have cameras in here (that i cannot find with an rf scanner), and stop the pseudoscience whenever i turn the recording on. it's frustrating, but if the disincentive works, it works, at least for now.

as such, i have hours worth of audio to sort through and while it's not picking their bullshit up, it is picking up sounds and other voices. as i am sorting through these sounds, i'm realizing i can get creative with this.

the rules for this project are that i'm going convert each day's worth of recordings into an industrial/ambient composition, and present the result as a series of demos to be completed when i get to 2024 in sequence, which could be quite a while. i want these to be compositions in the end, and not just soundscapes, but they will be dominantly sample collages, with the recordings as the sound sources.

this will be an entirely new project in the inri records catalog.

i want to actually get back to work, but i can't. they're constantly spying on me. they're hacking my network to try to steal my passwords and the best i can do is slow them down. they hack my camera system and break in here when i'm asleep. i can't stay online for more than a few minutes at a time. i think they want to steal all of my stuff and take over my youtube, blogger and bandcamp sites. rather than do all of things i want to do, i'm forced to fight with these losers that have no chance of actually stealing my things and that i want to just fuck off and go away. starting a new project that is a corollary of what i'm being forced to do, rather than do what i want to do (which is get back to completing the discography, in sequence), is making the best out of a horrible situation. so, let me get to it.

i don't know when this situation is going to resolve itself. these losers are actually enjoying this as they're competitive and capitalist lesbians that actually like to fight with the people around them rather than try to cooperate with them. they use references to football and also to chess. they think that evicting me and stealing my belongings is a game that they intend to win; i just want them to fuck off and go away. these are aggressive, dominant shitheads, which is a personality type i strongly dislike and go out of my way to completely avoid, but they don't get it, they just think i'm competing with them. it's exhibit a of why capitalism cannot coexist with real socialism; in a socialist society, you just simply can't tolerate losers like this, you have to send them on a one way trip to a different planet, or kill them if the technology to eject them into space doesn't exist yet. 

i will have a better understanding of the situation in the first week of june, but i don't expect anything to change until the end of the summer at the earliest.

i've listened to the injunction against israel, as delivered by the president of the icj, and i want to briefly summarize it because this is the kind of thing that goes viral all wrong, and i have the background to make sense of it properly. you've probably been misled on purpose.

the order is relatively standard legal fare and, while perhaps somewhat meddling, largely reasonable. the shortform analysis is:

1. a few months ago, the court told israel not to break international law during it's operation to dismantle hamas, but stopped short of deducing that had already happened or was imminent.

2. some shit happened

3. now, the court thinks that there's grounds to order an injunction for israel to halt activity that might lead to an infraction of international law while it adjudicates the complaint made by south africa

4. israel will then write the icj an essay explaining why it isn't breaking international law and isn't going to, either. the court will then decide whether to lift or extend the injunction through the length of the trial.

this isn't a finding that israel has necessarily done anything wrong, it's an injunction for israel to pause while the question is adjudicated, and which gives israel a number of opportunities to demonstrate it hasn't broken any laws and shouldn't be sanctioned. in terms of legal consequences, it's kind of irrelevant, except to change the court's starting position from a general "israel needs to make sure it doesn't break international law" to a more specific "israel needs to stop what it's doing and explain to us why it hasn't broken international law and isn't going to". it is certainly not a guilty verdict in the genocide case.

if this were a real court with real jurisdiction and israel were a citizen under that jurisdiction, it would be obligated to follow the injunction and write the essay. if the court is fair, and israel is really innocent and reasonable, it should then have the injunction lifted, in a month. i might point out that these accusations are questionable, but that is what this process is about, israel proving it hasn't done anything wrong.

yet, jurisdiction is determined by a monopoly on violence, and that is not in force. israel's greater concern is the court of public opinion.

the court also briefly called for the release of the hostages, but if the icj has some theoretical jurisdiction over israel, it has none over hamas. i think they should have included this call in their order anyways just for show, but the icj has no business ordering hamas to do anything, nor would it listen to them. this is nonetheless extremely important and what israel should base it's response on.

if i were israel, i would ignore the letter of the injunction but follow the spirit of it. i would not halt my operations in rafah, but i would write the icj the essay explaining why i'm not in contravention of the law, as requested. while israel has in past years and operations blatantly ignored international law, they actually seem to be doing this correctly, this time. call it irony or karma or what you will, but i don't think it's fair to assume israel is making the mistakes it used to make, given that all evidence i can find tells me that they actually aren't, and that they are following the law the best they can, in good faith.

i would also release a statement that israel is willing to follow the injunction if it is bilateral, but not if it is unilateral. that is, i would release a statement clarifying that israel will stop the rafah campaign if hamas releases the hostages, so that both parties are following the injunction but, however, that israel cannot follow the injunction unilaterally, and that the order that they do so (in the absence of a recognized state in gaza) is not fair or balanced.

i am not sure exactly what israel could then do to try to alter the rules of the situation. the court has acknowledged that hamas is in contravention of international law, but has no jurisdiction to order them to stop. it is not fair to expect that the rule-abiding party follow the order, while the rule-denying party evades the order, and that is a systemic issue that needs to be addressed, perhaps by modifying the charter so that this kind of imbalance can not happen again. 

israel should not ignore the injunction or claim it's anti-semitic, it should follow the spirit of the injunction (but not it's letter) and respond by trying to reform the institution to undo what is really a loophole that hamas is taking advantage of. after all, israel has a very powerful ally and this is but one example of a flawed international order that is long overdue for systemic reform.

there is something i've noticed about the diet i've been constructing over the last few years, which is that it is mostly new world originating produce. this wasn't done intentionally, but it is in theory more sustainable, as these plants evolved here, so long as it's actually done that way.

examples:

peppers: paprika, cayenne, hot sauce

sunflower seeds

strawberries 

avocado

quinoa

raspberries

blackberries

blueberries

cherries

tomato

pineapple

guava

coffee

these items make up a hugely central part of the various dishes.

other items like oranges and bananas are not indigenous to the americas but are major crops in the hemisphere.

you might consequently call this the "americas diet" and note it tries to take advantage of the higher nutritional value of crops that have been domesticated most recently.

while my hair is now long enough to be presentable (while still too short), i'm not going to get out to detroit this weekend and will likely be stuck inside most of the summer.

i thought the people stalking me moved out on may 1st, but they didn't. that narrows it down, seriously, to the actual owners or some members of my family, which may include my mother, my sister and my aunt. i have a hearing on may 27th that i expect to win. there are further hearings scheduled in june, september and october about complaints i've made. i will want to wait to see if there's a turnover on june 1st, but i will need to either move or have the property sold and the locks changed before i'm comfortable going out, and even that could be a while. i've been stalked, and the stalker wants to steal my gear. there's no guarantee that moving will throw the stalker off.

i wanted 2020 to be my blowout year; i've now missed several years, and it might be too late, unfortunately. i'm getting a little old, now.

people didn't used to believe i was almost 40. i'm now almost 45, and it's a little more apparent. i don't want to be obviously too old to go out dancing or be told i'm too old to get in. i can do that filter on myself.

so, i can't go out because some pathetic people will steal my belongings if i do, and i'm really sad and angry about it but it's reality.

i don't know exactly what's going on, but i think the stalkers upstairs are reading posts to this site and i have to be as clear as i can that there is no possibility that i'm going to have children. this seems to be a primary motive; somebody, apparently a family member or family members, wants me to breed.

it's ultimately the unwanted children themselves that suffer the most from being unwanted, and i don't want to create another unwanted child in this world. i'm not remotely interested in taking care of a child. i don't want the responsibility and i would not take any pleasure or gain any joy from it. all that a shit machine means to me is a form of slavery forcing me into unwanted labour in order to pay for them.

i successfully avoided making that mistake in the early part of my life. i'm 43 years old, now. now that i'm older and smarter, i'm not about to make that mistake, now.

these people don't seem to care much about science, so they don't want to listen to the fact that i'm castrated and unable to breed. i did not save sperm because i didn't want children.

the only way i could "start a family" is to adopt, and i have infinitely less interest in being enslaved to a stranger's mistake, after having avoided creating a mistake of my own.

this is very stupid and unhelpful. i do not want children and would not be a good parent because i don't wat children. that mistake would end up neglected and ignored and unwanted like a million others, including myself. 

my mind is not going to change; i made this decision when i was young and i've never considered revisiting it. i have always known i would never breed, and have never remotely wanted to.

i have better and more important things to do than waste my life raising children.

i have updated my diet to a weekly schedule, partly because it makes it easier to adjust to the need to order groceries once per month. you can compare this to the mediterranean or whatever diets out there.

i do not use added salt and i try to make most things myself. you should pick a relatively decent caesar brand (do your homework) and you should note that the frank's is often a less harmful substitute for salt. i add cheese, ice cream, bacon and salami to actually get fat, as the diet is void of it, otherwise. i don't like the taste of milk; this is a better option than drowning it in chocolate.

 

monday AM - cereal: 

45 gram all bran, 40 g vector, 15 g of wheat bran, 1 tbsp of flax seed, 10 g of nutritional yeast (w/ b12), 10 g of hemp seeds, 17 g of paprika, 1 tbsp of sunflower seeds, 400 ml of sugarless & fortified soy milk, 250 mg of vitamin c (1/2 of a 500 mg pill)

monday noonish - brunchy fruit bowl:

150 g of strawberries (frozen, usually), 2 bananas, 1 kiwi (with peel!), 1 mango (with peel!), 1 cara cara orange, 1 avocado, 10 g of hemp seeds, 1 tbsp of sunflower seeds, 125 mg of vitamin c

monday PM - avocado/guacamole pudding:

2 avocados, 1 tbsp cumin, 1 tbsp paprika, 10 g of nutritional yeast (w/ b12), 1 tbsp of sunflower seeds, 10 g hemp seeds, caesar salad dressing, frank's hot sauce, 30-50 g of retinal fortified cheddar cheese, 125 mg of vitamin c. you might dip whole wheat bread in this, but i just eat it with a spoon.

(vitamin c is normally taken in 125 mg doses at 00:00, 6:00, 12:00, 18:00, except mondays, where a double dose with the cereal is therapeutic)

tues AM: quinoa salad:

1 orange, 1 avocado, 1 red pepper, garlic, 1/3 cup of quinoa (cooked like rice in water & frank's red hot sauce), 1 tbsp nutritional yeast (W/ b12), 1 tbsp cumin, 1 tbsp paprika, 1 tbsp hemp seeds, 1 tbsp sunflower seeds, caesar salad dressing, frank's hot sauce, 50-75 g of retinal fortified cheddar cheese

tues PM: ice cream fruit bowl:

100 g of frozen strawberry, 1/2 container of raspberries, 1/2 container of blackberries,  1/2 container of blueberries, 2 bananas, 1 kiwi, 1 tbsp of hemp seeds, 1 tbsp of nutritional yeast (w/ b12), 200 g of chapman's cherry ice cream, with extra fresh cherries when available

wed @ noonish: tossed salad:

50 g of kale stalks, 50 g of broccoli, 110 g of carrot, 1 beet, 1 red pepper, 1 tomato, garlic, 1 tbsp of cumin, 1 tbsp of nutritional yeast (w/ b12), 1 tbsp paprika, 1 tbsp hemp seeds, 1 tbsp sunflower seeds, 1 tbsp oregano, frank's hot sauce, caesar salad dressing, 50-75 g of retinal fortified cheddar cheese, 1 tsp of cayenne pepper, black pepper

thurs early AM: bacon-avocado-tomato sandwich or melt

two open pieces of quinoa + flax whole wheat bread each built with, in order: olive oil margarine, (avocado + garlic), (1 tbsp nutritional yeast w/b12 + 1 tbsp paprika), (five slices of retinol fortifed cheddar cheese + 1 piece of low sodium bacon), caesar salad dressing, 1/2 a sliced tomato, frank's hot sauce, pepper, with a glass of 30% grapefruit and 70% orange juice

this could be a melt if you want.

friday at 00:00: fettucine

on plate: 1 tomato, 1 red pepper, thyme, basil, oregano, garlic, avocado

add mildly cooked fettucine, with, in order 1 tbsp of olive oil margarine, 150 g of fresh pineapple, (2 pieces of low sodium bacon + 100 g of fried spicy salami or some other meat like grasshoppers in the future when available), 1 tbsp of cumin, 1 tbsp of nutritional yeast (w/ b12), 1 tbsp of paprika, 1 tbsp of hemp seeds, 1 tbsp of sunflower seeds, caesar salad dressing, 130 g of grated marble cheese.

microwave or bake until cheese is melted.

then add frank's hot sauce, black pepper, cayenne pepper

with  a glass of 30% grapefruit and 70% orange juice.

friday PM: caesar salad

110 g of chopped kale, garlic, avocado, two limes (with peel), 2 slices of low sodium bacon, 1 tbsp of cumin, 1 tbsp of sunflower seeds, 1 tbsp of nutritional yeast (w/ b12), 1 tbsp of hemp seeds,  1 tbsp of paprika, 1 tbsp of oregano, 1 tsp of cayenne, two pieces of whole wheat bread (including the germ) as croutons, 1 cup of fortified sugar-free soy milk, 1 tbsp of olive oil margarine, 100 g of retinol-fortified chedder cheese, frank's hot sauce, caesar salad dressing, black pepper and a glass of 30% grapefruit and 70% orange juice.

saturday PM: nachos

preferably, 1 small bag of zesty cheese doritos + 1 small bag of dill pickle doritos, or 1 big bag of zesty cheese

add homemade salsa on chips: 1/2 tomato, 1/2 red pepper, avocado, garlic, 1 tbsp oregano, 1 tbsp cumin, 1 tbsp paprika, 1 tsp cayenne, black pepper, frank's red hot sauce, 

add 1 tbsp of hemp seeds, 1 tbsp sunflower seeds, 1 tbsp nutritional yeast, 2 slices of low sodium bacon

add 130 g of grated marble cheese.

microwave or bake until cheese is melted.

then add caesar salad dressing, frank's hot sauce on top

w glass of grapefruit/orange juice

sun AM & sun PM: eggs (twice on sundays)

two pieces of flax & quinoa bread open, each with (in order) margarine, same salsa as nachos above (with remaining red pepper and tomato), 1 piece of low sodium bacon, 1 tbsp of nutritional yeast (1/ b12), five slices of retinol-fortified cheddar cheese, two fried eggs (sunny side up), black pepper and

a glass of grapefruit/orange juice

this makes my shopping more predictable for a while, until i'm able to go out of the house again, once the fight with my landlord subsides.

i'm not certain if i'll hold on to the added dishes, which are the pasta, the bacon-tomato sandwich and the nachos, but i'm leaning that way.

what do i think should be done in gaza?

the idea that gaza is or should be an independent country is moronic and people stating as much cannot be listened to or otherwise taken seriously. anybody suggesting a palestinian state as an outcome of this process should be laughed out of the room; that is not a serious discussion.

gaza needs a marshall plan, and it needs to be done under heavy israeli occupation, in conjunction with a un peacekeeping force. they should depopulate the entire region, bulldoze it, rebuild it and then focus on ensuring that the new inhabitants receive a secular education that separates them from their recent history of islamism. this focus on a secular education is of the utmost importance and the primary tactic that is required to prevent further conflict in the region. a particular focus on economic development should also be fundamental.

international law is likely to be more of a hindrance than a help in stabilizing the region and some attempt to reform the international institutions to rewrite some laws to be less conservative and allow for more aggressive processes of needed change may also be required. this legal regime was written to freeze the world as it was in 1945, and that is no longer what anybody should want and something that needs to be moved on from. this is a situation where forced population replacement is helpful to the stability of the region, and the law should allow for it rather than try to stop it. this idea that all population replacement is criminal needs to be re-examined.

once the region is rebuilt, i think there should be a referendum to join egypt, with egypt's consent. if that referendum fails, some talk of statehood may again become relevant some time around 2050.

the substantive part of the prosecutor's application for a warrant against netanyahu would appear to be the (baseless) clam that he's starving the population, which is not rooted in clear evidence and which i do not expect to be granted. the israelis claim that they're being careful about shipments in and out of the country to stop weapons smuggling, and that's a convincing argument. further, the fact is that gazans aren't starving and that israel is only indirectly responsible for the absence of any sort of economy in gaza and the presence of poor eating habits, which is mostly cultural. i would like to see an objective comparison on child malnutrition performed between gaza, egypt and the united states; i would expect the result to be illuminating. the prosecutor needs to demonstrate grounds that include intent, and i don't think he can even establish that the facts on the ground justify a charge at all.

it is well documented that hamas hides behind civilians (and uses hospitals and schools as bases) and that hamas' tactics are what is primarily responsible for the high collateral. there is simply no clear intent to target civilians, as could be demonstrated in a court of law (israel can clearly demonstrate a number of things it does to avoid civilian targets, and consequently even avoid a negligence charge), and there is simply no actual mass of starving civilians, despite repeated warnings that such an outcome is imminent which never seem to materialize.

as such, i would expect the justices to reject the warrant against netanyahu and gallant as lacking in merit.

if you read through the statement by the prosecutor, it is apparent that the warrant request is some kind of identity politics designed to balance the much more grounded application against hamas leadership, including that currently living in qatar. it is much easier to demonstrate that the oct 7th attack was planned and intentionally slaughtered civilians and took them hostage; this very clearly meets the definition of an obvious war crime that can actually be prosecuted in a court of law, as we have real victims and we actually have intent. the prosecutor's statement is full of weasley words and both sidesism that make it clear that the court doesn't want to be seen as taking a side in the conflict, and is therefore charging representatives of both parties to evade a claim of pro-israeli bias.

this is unfortunate and comes off as amateur. hamas is a terrorist group that needs to be brought to justice; the israeli state is trying to do that using the methods available to it, and should not be lectured by distant academics in their comfortable ivory towers. yet, for whatever political reasons, they seem to have felt the need to do this, and it can only be criticized for what it is.

if there is a potential issue of bias to note, it is rather worth noting that the prosecutor is a muslim and as such has a conflict of interest that should cause him to defer the case to somebody of non-muslim background. history will harshly judge a muslim prosecutor framing this attack on "zionism" using the warped language that they use.

there is an extremely strong case for war crimes against hamas and i expect the warrants to be granted. this is a positive development; the qatar leadership should be rotting in the hague.

conversely, the legal case against netanyahu is exceedingly weak and i would be very surprised if the court grants the warrant request at all, let alone if there's any sort of trial.

instead of pretending that there's some kind of equivalence between hamas and the israeli state, or that both sides should be held to the same standards, i would call on the icc to acknowledge that this isn't a war but a police operation and that israel has the right to dismantle what is essentially an organized crime syndicate operating on it's border in order to stop it from committing crimes in it's territory. there is some language in the statement that indicates that there is a realization that what is happening is not a war and should not be framed as one, despite the propaganda from al jazaeera and the jingoist press releases from the knesset.

the political considerations here are likely substantive, as past israeli leaderss (most notably ariel sharon) legitimately should have been charged with war crimes, and were not. this police operation to shut down hamas is the most justified israeli action in decades, yet it is the one that gets the response from the icc, as weak as it is. netanyahu is a very prickly character that is widely disliked, but that doesn't create the legal justification to charge him with such weak evidence, when his predecessors were so obviously guilty of actual crimes that could have been actually prosecuted and were not.

the icc might even be charged with collectively punishing netanyahu for the crimes of sharon, but we're not there yet.

my opinion on marriage is that it's an archaic institution that has no place in modern society and should be abolished. to the extent that it ought to exist at all, it ought to exist as a purely religious ceremony. i actually would very forcibly argue that enforcing a separation of church and state in a secular society means removing the state from any responsibility of oversight or definition of marriage at all; the state has no place in the activity of marriage, it is strictly a religious function.

what that means is that if the religious psychotics want to define marriage as heterosexual, i actually think they have a right to do that, as marriage is their idea and their institution. a secular society rooted in atheist civil traditions would not have marriage at all, as it is not a secular idea and doesn't make any sense in a truly atheist worldview. 

it would follow that if gay people want to invent their own religion and define their own institutions, they ought to be free to that, i guess. i mean, to the extent that any kind of marriage is stupid, gay people getting married isn't any more stupid. this isn't something the state should be involved in defining or overseeing, it ought to be a religious institution and process that the state has no power to interfere in. 

this is a legal and civil opinion: marriage is obsolete, but gay people shouldn't be told they can't get married, if they can find a religion to marry them, and they really insist.

but, my personal opinion is that gay marriage is a dumb idea that is attempting to enforce a concept of human nature that is contrary to our biological instincts and our normal behaviour. lesbian marriage strikes me as particularly stupid. nobody should be surprised to find out that gay marriages rarely last more than a year, and the average length of a lesbian marriage is measured in months. these girls are all just lying to themselves.

when i meet married lesbians (particularly), i have a hard time taking them seriously. either they're (in fact imminently) going to cheat on each other and end their friendship in a vicious cat fight as they accuse each other of being controlling, or it's an open relationship and they're not really married. this is not real marriage by any sort of meaningful definition, and no thinking person would ever interpret it that way.

torpedoing raisi's helicopter wouldn't be sufficient retaliation for iran's insane strike on israel, but it would be worth at least two missiles, re: a tit for tat response.

i'm actually in support of assassinating the iranian leadership, and i would have been in support of assassinating saddam hussein, despite my opposition to the 2003 invasion. this is a far better tactic.

iran has a real opposition movement to the fundamentalists. i don't know if it's a majority, exactly, but it may be enough to tip into critical mass, if it gets a little help from the outside.

biden would rather deal with benny gantz than old man netanyahu, and i don't know the half of it or what interpersonal conflicts have developed between two men that have been near the top of their respective countries for the last thirty years, but i want to point out that i bet roosevelt hated churchill's guts, and you can tell just by looking at the pictures of the two of them, 80+ years later, and he didn't pull the trigger until after the war because he knew better.

i would hope the people of israel interpret gantz' ultimatum cynically. it's not helpful, right now. 

i grasp that there's innocent people being held in terrible conditions and there are people that love them that don't want to lose hope, but if you give hamas what it wants then it will do this again, and they've broadcast as much. the prime minister can't do that, as it's not in the country's interest. this is hard, but hold your resolve, israel.

israelis don't talk about martyrs, and i don't think they should start, either. these are not fallen soldiers, they're murder victims. but, their memories will outlast them, and those affected need to see the bigger picture.

it seems like nobody wants to tell them that, but they must be told it.

the pentagon should consider a remilitarized germany to be a greater threat than an economically recovered russia, and i'd suggest it's likely that it actually does.

if the consequences of military support for ukraine are german aggression, which is inevitable, that is not in america's self-interest, or britain's.

canada should not be paying for this.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/canada-pitches-in-76-million-for-faster-german-air-defence-systems-in-ukraine-1.6882166

national polling in the united states is not very helpful right now and will become less helpful over the upcoming years, as rural america disappears underneath a wave of exurban and suburban housing projects that give the democrats a decisive structural advantage.

biden should be favoured to win. substantively.

but shit happens.

i'm surprised this record has become so obscure. it sold well.

let me correct a historical misunderstanding while i'm at it. 

did you know that the nazis, and hitler, actually liked islam? because they did, and because there's actually a longstanding pro-islamic thread in german history going back to a seminal history textbook called the history of the decline and fall of the roman empire by edward gibbon, as published in the late 18th century. gibbon's thesis was that christianity contributed to the fall of the empire by making it "decadent" and "weak", via it's embrace of pacifism. islam, on the other hand, was a militaristic religion that made the arab armies strong and dominant. for that reason, islam is superior to christianity, and a vigorous civilization (like the germans) should choose islam over christianity.

"Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiers [...] then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world." - adolf hitler

now, of course, the nazi elite actually adhered to a kind of neo-paganism that was about trying to reconstruct an indigenous german faith to replace this jewish system of christianity with, but the nazis were classist and saw the value of the jewish value system to brainwash the masses with. don't try to make sense of nazism; nazism is like quantum physics, nobody really understands it. just shut up and compute. so, the nazi vision of the world was something like there being a german elite of neo-pagans at the top and a mass of muslims at the bottom.

for that reason, the nazis did not persecute muslims. there are some anecdotes of muslims being persecuted,  mostly because they were mistaken for jews, and a handful of arabs ended up at auschwitz because they were homosexuals or communists, but there simply wasn't any kind of systemic extermination of arabs or muslims at all. to the contrary, the nazis sought out alliances with nationalistic muslim resistance armies in the middle east because they were fighting the british. the muslim nationalists saw a "natural ally" in hitler, as they had a common enemy, the jews.

the italians complicated this, and hitler was actually pissed off about it. hitler actually criticized mussolini directly for making it harder to win the support of muslim nationalists.

again, that doesn't mean that every muslim was a nazi. but, think about it. the ideologies are actually quite similar, if you do a rational comparison. these muslim leaders were correct - hitler was their natural ally.

there's even a wikipedia page about this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relations_between_Nazi_Germany_and_the_Arab_world

every once in a while i hear somebody suggest that being critical of islam is in some way some kind of nazism, and i always just gasp. this is actually one of the most ignorant positions you could possibly take.

attacking jerry seinfeld is just the most recent demonstration that these protesters are in fact nazis. seinfeld has nothing to do with this.

listen, i know there's a fine line here. i agree that criticizing israel is not anti-semitic. however, what we're seeing repeatedly, and everywhere, is at times vicious attacks on individual jews and not reasoned criticism of netanyahu's government.

i've been in these protests, and i know the truth, which is why i'm so quick to react. i'm an anarcho-communist; i'm on the furthest fringe of the left. these are, at least nominally, my tribe out there. yet, i know they hate jews, because i've seen it. even when they are presenting reasoned critiques, and it isn't anti-semitic, you can tell from their tone of voice and their body language that the jew-hating is visceral and real and the actual driving force, not some level of solidarity with palestine or hamas - because these are people that have no common ground with hamas at all.

the right is correct, here; this blatant jew-hating has become mainstream and it's an issue that needs immediate addressing. i'm critical of islam, but i don't treat individual muslims like this at all. i know that people are diverse and it's not fair to make assumptions.

the name palestine derives from an ethnic group that occupied the gaza strip during the iron age and leading into the classical period and that is referenced in the bible as the philistines. this ethnic group is also referenced in egyptian hieroglyphs as having migrated into the region during a period called the bronze age collapse, c 1500 bce. cross-disciplinary historical investigations, including genetic studies, have identified the philistines as a greek ethnic group that moved into the gaza area as a part of a large migration southwards that the egyptians referred to as 'sea peoples' and would appear to have been a mix of indo-european groups, including halstatt period celts. these sea peoples conquered the eastern mediterranean region and dismantled most of the urban centres, replacing them with a seafaraing civilization that became what we call the classical civilization of greeks and phonecians, as told to us in the homeric epics. my own opinion after having looked into it is that they were essentially early vikings. 

during the period that the philistines lived in gaza, west semitic speaking tribes inhabited the region between syria and egypt. these people are known to history variously as phoenicians (the greek name for them) or canaanites (apparently their name for themselves), and what we call israel and jewish identity broke off from the canaanites some time during the iron age, but it actually remains unclear how due to the obscuring and enduring influence of the bible, which is a useless source of actual history. there is essentially no evidence that anything in the bible before the captivity is anything more than a late founding myth, but it is relatively clear that a semitic speaking people migrated into the area with the persians and re-occupied the phoenecian coast, after it had been devastated by the barbaric assyrians. these are the people we today call the jews. outside of a linguistic continuity, it's not clear what relationship these jews actually had to the canaanites and phoenecians, the remnants of which fled assyrian barbarism by migrating to north africa. however, these jews then remained put in the levant through most of antiquity, while living in close proximity to the greek  philistines, who, quite oddly, were actually there first.

what eventually happened was that the romans conquered the entire area, made the area then called judea into several different provinces and, many centuries later, eventually renamed the area from judea to philistinia in a conscious attempt to redefine the space ethnically, and in an act that we would today label clearly as genocide. before it was persia,  the mortal, perpetual enemy of rome was carthage, until it was destroyed. the historical sources are not there to back me up, but i strongly suspect that the destruction of judaea was the last stage in the destruction of carthage and that most of the tropes we today label as anti-semitic (like the baby-eating thing) are actually roman propaganda against the carthaginians (although the carthaginians actually do appear to have practiced a type of child sacrifice relatively late into antiquity). this decision by rome to change the name of the province was eventually adopted by conquering arabs, who inherited the name of the province as philistinia, which in arab is falasteen and in english is palestine.

in depth genetic studies on the current inhabitants of gaza and the west bank, as well as what we call israeli arabs, indicate that they are overwhelmingly hebrew in ancestry. that's right - the palestinians are actually converted jews. however, if we could find some actually philistines in gaza today, and we no doubt could if we looked hard enough, we would learn that they are of r1* indo-european greek ancestry. these philistines could perhaps migrate back to europe; i'd propose their quality of life would dramatically increase, if they did. 

while the question of eastern european jewry's origins is a valid scientific question, it has at this point been extensively studied and determined that there was a genetic bottleneck that took place and that a small number of middle eastern men moved into eastern europe with a smaller number of women and did eventually marry some of the slavic speaking women that were indigenous to the region but overall retained an almost gross level of inbreeding. as such, it has been thoroughly scientifically proven that eastern european jews do in fact have overwhelming middle eastern ancestry. the claim otherwise is intuitive and based on skin colour, but skin colour is not exactly a fixed characteristic, and people that are not of subsaharan african ancestry will vary their skin tones wildly depending on their exposure to sunlight. pigmentation is a variable trait and an adaptation. my own skin colour has varied dramatically from swedish white to sicilian brown, and my picture archive demonstrates it clearly.

while the actual truth is that both jews and palestinians are actually hebrews, they are just hebrews with different religions, it nonetheless follows that philistines are a european tribe and ethnic group, while the jews are clearly of west semitic ancestry (despite having very curious iranian cultural overtones). if anybody should go back to europe, it should be the philistines, if we insist on having a witch hunt to actually find them.

i'd really rather boycott metro or sobeys if i was concerned about high costs, as loblaws is actually relatively competitive. the cheapest grocery store here is walmart, as it is everywhere else, but loblaws is frequently a close second.

the boycott appears to be lowering prices, though, which is predictable.

justin trudeau still doesn't know what the rule of law is, and at this point he should be embarrassed because he simply comes off as horribly ignorant, like a pretentious child using words he doesn't understand. the irony is that his government has repeatedly skirted or even suspended the rule of law, such as with the illegal police crackdown on the bodily autonomy rights protesters that shut down ottawa a few years ago.

there has been no government in canada's history with less respect for the rule of law, or which has suspended it with such disregard.

i think this is a fitting and appropriate way to dismantle these sites. i mean, the sites needed to be dismantled in some way. how to do it? this is the most appropriate and most correct way to do it. i would like to see this tactic applied to the other sites across the country. let's make these idiot protesters feel the same way the victims of the hamas attack did, up to a difference of scale; it's worthwhile to point out that nobody was killed and i hope nobody was actually raped. 

i want to point out that it is obvious that the counter-protesters were police officers from the anecdotes in the times article, and that shouldn't surprise anybody. i like the cops' sense of humour, snark, irony and justice here, which is rare. i don't normally applaud the cops, but this is awesome. they even sent firecrackers into the camp, like palestinian terrorists routinely send into israel, in an apparent tongue-in-cheek nod to norman finkelstein.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/03/us/ucla-protests-encampment-violence.html

the irony of pro-hamas supporters complaining about their party being ransacked by masked vigilantes should not be lost on anyone.

but, this is fundamentally about muslims complaining about being colonized, which is hilarious.

those "kids", who are apparently mostly actually middle aged men without university educations, should be happy that nobody raped them, killed them, or tossed their severed body parts around in the street.

the bbc is claiming that netanyahu's decision to close al jazeera will not help the peace negotiations. i actually disagree.

in principle, the israeli state should not be shutting down any media organizations. the unquestionable factual reality that al jazeera is a horribly biased, openly anti-israel source that spews factually inaccurate, skewed, brutally anti-jewish propaganda out to the west, and that their warped framing of the conflict as "israel's war" is actually having some effect on a subset of the population, is a reason to not shut al jazeera down.

however, al jazeera is state media run by the qatari sheikhs. it's a mouthpiece for the qatari government, who has played a major role in representing hamas. where does the head tyrant of qatar actually live? in a cushy villa in qatar, where he's bankrolled by iranian nazis. qatar is also an iranian beachhead on the arabian peninsula. when one of the primary news sources, as poor and propagandistic as it is, is also a lead negotiator, that creates a conflict of interest. eliminating that conflict of interest should help focus the qataris more on the plot.

that doesn't mean it's something that should be supported, exactly, but the bbc is wrong in it's analysis, at the least.

of course the capitalist pro-drug vampires will mumble something about "removing the stigma around drug use". right. what does that mean, exactly? because it's an objective fact that drug use is disgusting, unsanitary, unhealthy and not something that normal people want to be around, for the reason that it attracts criminals and that drugs make people crazy. drug use is a vector for disease transmission. there is a stigma around drug use because it's disgusting, and that stigma should absolutely remain in place.

should we try to remove the stigma around scatology while we're at it? mmmm. yummy.

rather, what these people are saying is that they want to normalize drug use, and anybody telling you that should get punched in the face. 

the stigma around drug use is a good thing and should remain in place. addicts should not be brought out of the shadows, they should be locked in closets and brushed under the rug.

bc is recriminalizing drug consumption in public spaces. the truth is that they didn't understand the idea around legalizing it in the first place, because the idea was being pushed by capitalist opportunists rather than actual health experts. the same thing, or more, is on the brink of happening in washington and oregon. these are blue states that might be handing the republicans a gift in the upcoming election cycle. i'd keep an eye out for some surprise upsets in the pacific northwest, due to public bafflement that the state won't do anything about dangerous drug users, which is what the actual policy was and not what the policy is supposed to be.

in portugal, which is supposed to be the model, the state continues to run the kind of mental health institutions that are considered to be arcane in north america and that is what the actual policy is in that country. portugal does not have a libertarian drug policy that lets the free market deal with drug use, it has a socialist model that rounds up drug addicts and puts them in mental health institutions, where they are forced to undergo intense rehab in a manner that would be considered unconstitutional in both canada and the united states. this is not some kind of secret; it's easily found in a basic google search. unfortunately, it would appear that neither the political activists nor the politicians nor the minority of health workers that have supported this approach have ever actually read up on what the portugese model actually is, but have instead relied on second or third hand word of mouth descriptions that no doubt originated in social media posts. the idea that the portugese model is a free market model is a purplemonkeydishwasher interpretation of what the portugese model actually is, and this is an actual example of a real life failure in policy brought on by poorly sourced information sharing over social media (and yet is not the kind of 'disinformation' we hear about by pro-government scare mongerers).

it's worthwhile to point out that when useful and correct information that contradicted bad policy by the state was shared over social media, it was attacked as 'disinformation' but the same state bodies were equally eager to write bad policy based on actual poorly sourced information that came to them via the same vector of social media. this proves that the problem is not the technology itself, but the people using it; we should not fear computers or social media, we should fear state institutions run by ignorant people and we should approach the problem by launching education campaigns for government workers, to ensure that the state is better at processing information it receives from questionable sources. we should fear ignorant public servants, not the tools they use to poorly gather information with.

it takes little to no foresight to predict that a free market drug policy divorced from the socialist portugese model of aggressive, enforced rehabilitation would simply lead to chaos, carnage and death. we in truth were not following the portugese model of recent years, but the chinese model of the nineteenth century, when british gun ships introduced opium to the chinese masses in order to weaken the population, and the chinese state didn't take the threat seriously. china certainly takes the threat of mass drug addiction seriously, nowadays. yet, the governments on this continent see the populace as a threat and an enemy to contain, which is fundamentally different from the cultural communitarianism that exists in china. you have to understand that the state is killing people on purpose and that it isn't some coincidence that it targeted portland, oregon, which is the most socialist city in the country.

what's happening, however, is a moral panic rather than a carefully thought out change in policy. while predictable, moral panics are not helpful and don't create good policy, either. we're moving from one failed policy to another, which is reflective of the systemic failure underlying all of the failure in the first place.

i'm typing this as i'm yelling at a smoker that lives upstairs that i thought had moved out and apparently hasn't. this person signed a non-smoking lease and then ignored it. she knows i have asthma, she knows the property is non-smoking and she's listened to me yell at her to go smoke somewhere else for months but she just keeps smoking anyways. this person doesn't care about the well-being of the people around her in the remotest bit; she's simply a worthless, self-centered piece of shit. is there some mental illness underlying her selfish and narcissistic behaviour? my guess is that it's mostly bad parenting, and a culture of hedonism. she's a reflection of the capitalist society she exists within. yet, what i'm experiencing is a clear example of why a policy that forces drug users into residential areas is exactly what nobody wants. this woman chain smokes nicotine and occasionally smokes marijuana; i've smelled some heavy substances that i think might be meth, but she doesn't seem to smoke meth every day. if you're annoyed by the crackhead at the park because you don't want your kids around her, imagine having your kids forced to breath the shit in twenty times a day from your neighbour because the government tells her she's only allowed to smoke crack inside her apartment. this is not a better outcome, this is the worst policy possible. public health experts have been trying to rid the world of second hand smoke for decades, and then the stupid government shows up and tells addicts (who are almost always renters) that they're only allowed to smoke drugs inside their rented units, thereby creating a government policy to maximize the consequences of second-hand smoke. what a disaster.

rather, what we need is something like bars for drug users. bars were the ideal compromise to deal with moral panics around alcohol use, as it kept the drunks inside while keeping them out of residential areas. i don't understand why we haven't had marijuana bars pop up, as it would get the potheads out of residential spaces, where they pollute the lungs of non-smokers. likewise, we should have bars for crackheads and junkies, places where the cops can also keep an eye on what's going on.

i support the actual portugese model of aggressive treatment, to a point. i actually think that most of these people are hopeless and that trying to help them is just a waste of public resources that could be spent on more worthy social assistance recipients, like disabled people. i would rather continue to criminalize hard drug use and force people into treatment when they're in jail (which is the only way we could implement the actual portugese model in north america, because we have bills of rights), and i think there should be hefty $1000+ fines for smoking anything (marijuana, cigarettes, fire pits, bbqs) in residential spaces. nobody should ever have to deal with any kind of drifting or second-hand smoke from their neighbours, ever, at all. yet, if we're to treat the issue like a mental health issue then we need to actually take that idea seriously and generate the resources to do so, not wave our hands and leave it up to the market to figure it out. that is the lesson from the failed free market drug policy in the pacific northwest: free market approaches just don't work.

the comments are reprehensible and i condemn them in the strongest terms possible, but this is exactly the situation that free speech advocates seek to avoid in criminalizing clearly despicable speech. by arresting this woman and charging her with hate crimes, the state is creating a martyr, who will generate supporters. now, she can claim she is the one being persecuted, when she should be being criticized as an aggressor and a nazi. this is a gift to what is in truth the far-right, even if it labels itself as left-wing.

a better idea is to let her speak freely, and call her an idiot when she's done.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/hate-investigation-demonstration-comments-1.7190914

is killing your dog not illegal in south dakota?

am i missing something?

kristi noem should be charged, clearly.

we were supposed to support voting for joe biden because donald trump was going to start a world war. how did that work out for us? i didn't endorse either of these shitfaces last time and i'm not going to endorse either of them this time, either. this is in truth the least consequential election of my lifetime, as the outcome will clearly have no discernible effect on any kind of policy anywhere. it truly doesn't matter who wins.

however, i think that something sobering needs to be seriously considered: both of these men are very likely going to be dead by the year 2028. donald trump's running mate should consequently be the deciding factor in whether you should vote against him or vote for a third party. i found mike pence to be infinitely more frightening than donald trump, and trump may very well present another absolutely frightening running mate, which might make voting for kamala harris necessary, if undesirable.

it seems as though the disgusting, abject total losers that lived upstairs and have been harassing me for the last year have finally left. i'm struggling now to convince myself that they're actually gone. 

there was a woman upstairs for the last year that never ever left the house and it absolutely freaked me out. i'm having difficulty accepting that she's finally gone, that she's finally going to leave me alone.

i have ptsd as a consequence of childhood abuse. i don't have a history of hearing voices but i do have a history of flashbacks; i am fully confident that i heard everything i heard and that it was real in the sense that it was physically stated, that it was enunciated from an actual human's lips, but now the actual struggle with my actual mental health concern is about to begin, which is trying to convince myself that the flashbacks are actually flashbacks. i am absolutely expecting months worth of trauma, and the fact that i can't leave the house until the tenancy issue is resolved is simply going to add to the process.

are they really gone? really? or did i just hear a door close? did i hear a voice in the distance, or is it trauma?

it's going to take a while for me to process this, and i'm going to need space and patience to do it in. i know the tenants were drugging me, but i don't know if they were acting independently or on the order of the landlords or on the order of somebody else they were working for. i consequently don't know yet if this nightmare is actually really over or not.

i was waiting for them to leave to set up my new network and i hope that i can get back to working on something substantive soon.

the bds protests at the universities are unfortunate. the reality is that the best way to understand them are as a reflection of the demographic changes taking place in the west, and i think it should cause a moment of pause: do we want this outcome? it is not inevitable, it is easy to understand the causes and it is reversible with changes in policy.

the kids are wrong, but they're more confused than evil. this particular attack by hamas could not be justified and it demonstrates why hamas, as a brutal fascist organization, needs to be destroyed. the idea that hamas is fighting against israeli colonialism is idiotic; hamas is a brutal fascist dictatorship that wants to convert everybody to islam and kill all the fags. hamas is more ideologically in line with colonialism than netanyahu is. the correct position is to support the imminent and permanent and thorough destruction of hamas, and have subtleties about it if you insist.

however, there used to be marxist groups in palestine and they used to be a part of what they interpreted as a colonial struggle (i don't agree with the perspective, as the jews were there first, but i understand the argument. i actually support a one-state solution where all citizens have equal rights, regardless of ethnicity or religion.). what's happening is that the kids are basically reading out of date literature and then making the mistake of applying it to the current moment, and then having that mistake reinforced by their professors and elders, who are the ones that need to be denounced, not the kids. the kids learn what they're taught. it's truly the profs that are the ones making a serious mistake, here.

we can talk about root causes all day, and we should, but what i want to type briefly in this space is that it is clearly the israelis (and the egyptians, who i am pleased to see are finally taking some initiative on the matter, which is long overdue) that need to take the initiative in redesigning a post-hamas gaza strip because the palestinians don't currently have the prerequisites to maintain a functioning democracy. this point is being lost. you can't just take any tribe out of the jungle and give them democracy, there has to be pre-conditions met, and they cannot be met at the moment in gaza. if they repeat the same mistakes, they'll get the same outcome. i've been calling the israeli policy genocide since before everybody else was calling it apartheid (i may be the author of this shift in direction), but this is a genocide that is required to get out of the status quo, which is not desirable and is not sustainable. gaza cannot be a democracy and the people that live there need to be deprogrammed in a way that is not realistic; it is easier and safer to just wipe them out. somebody else then needs to take over and focus on infrastructure and education and development. eventually, one day, they can start talking about a democratic state again.

the lesson from this process needs to be that you can't just build a fence around a city and expect the people that live there to adjust to it. i've read some things recently that suggest the israelis understand this and that there's a broad consensus developing that the root cause of palestinian terrorism is the tactics deployed by ariel sharon, which were in fact not favoured by the israeli civil service, military or intelligence apparatus, who wanted a mini marshall plan rather than a neo-auschwitz. unfortunately, sharon won the argument and we now have the consequences of a neo-auschwitz, and it is going to create terrorist headaches for decades. that mistake needs to not be repeated.

what the kids ought to be saying is that there needs to be serious shifts in the israeli's approach to a post-hamas gaza, that there needs to be a focus on infrastructure and development and that egypt needs to be taking a primary role in the process. they should not be arguing against dismantling hamas, but they've been confused and misled by simplistic and warped ideologies that are difficult to apply to a post-industrial world. they're just kids, and they're just trying to be cool.

it is ultimately of little consequence what the kids think, but i am concerned about the violent nature of the crackdowns, which would appear to be unnecessary. the admins and higher ups are embarrassed by the riff raff and want to mow the lawn of the protest presence. well, again, we need to ask: do we want this outcome? if not, we need to change our immigration policies, and we need to pay more attention to who we hire to teach our kids.

when these people talk about the culture of northern europe, they use terms like colonialism and draw attention to the crimes of the past. however, they expect everybody to follow the rules of their culture, and complain that they're being oppressed when other people don't obey their dictates; not following their rules is oppression, but expecting people to follow our rules is colonialism. it's a double standard.

worse, it's a historical half-truth, at best. in reality, arabs invented colonialism as we understand it today (i mean, the greeks had colonies, but...) and islam is in fact the most brutally colonizing force in human history, worse than christianity by several degrees. besides, what we call "european colonialism" was carried out by the largely middle eastern in origin cultures of southern europe, orchestrated by the egyptian-origin religion of christianity and carried out primarily by olive-skinned and sometimes outright brown spanish, portugese and italians, many of whom even had some arab ancestry. when the various wars of the age of enlightenment came to an end, and the north of europe triumphed over the south, the result was that the northern europeans abolished the arab-originating slave institutions and undid the olive-skinned christian colonial projects, rather than continue or advance them. the result of white people taking over the world was the end of slavery, not the enforcement of it.

this double standard needs to be addressed and the hypocrisy needs to be deconstructed. we're long overdue for this backlash. as mentioned, quebec is ahead of the curve; this is a process that needs to happen. we need to protect our european, liberal, secular and atheist institutions and we need to make doing so a serious priority, lest we wake up in saudi arabia and not understand what happened.

sarah jama's disgusting outburst in the ontario legislature last week was a despicable act of disrespect for the cultural norms and values of the culture she is currently living in, and which has made an attempt to include her and encouraged her to thrive. it is long past the time that the historically pagan and white cultures of northern europe stood up for themselves in asserting the expectation that the cultural values of secularism and atheism be respected by foreigners that are visiting here and that our institutions be respected and our laws be followed.  such disrespectful outbursts need to be condemned in the strongest terms possible, and i would call on her to immediately resign. 

perhaps she could go to gaza and run for office there. i expect there will be some kind of elections there soon. i'd advise she pack a lunch.

i want to explicitly clarify that i have no affiliation with cevin key or skinny puppy whatsoever because there is apparently somebody upstairs that thinks my jjjjjjjjjj^2 record is going to be a new tear garden record. i'm going to try to contact ka-spel, artefact records and a few others. 

cevin key is a thief. he's a drug addict loser that steals everybody else's music. i've somehow been targeted. i think. 

i saw somebody in my garage about a year ago that looked startling like him, and i thought he was just a wannabe.

i've been struggling to understand what is going on here. i think it's beginning to become clear. i'm not letting this washed up old loser steal my music.

when pierre polievre claims that the problem with trudeau is not that he's too liberal but that he's actually deeply illiberal, he is correct. unfortunately, all evidence suggests that polievre is even less liberal than trudeau is. 

canada is a country with a deep history of liberal institutions and that has liberalism so thoroughly embedded in it's laws that it has lost the requirement of liberal political representation. it is not the case that canada has been overrun by "woke liberalism", it is the case that there is no longer anything remotely approximating liberalism in the political spectrum at all, because liberalism was so triumphant here in the 20th century that it lost it's political prerogative and faded away into cultural norms.

the result is that we have three parties, and they are all deeply illiberal, because you essentially have to react against the liberal institutions here to have any purpose in existing at all. polievre remains a figurehead for the radical right; a true conservative movement in canada would be about maintaining our liberal institutions. the ndp are a bourgeois socialist party and the liberals themselves are increasingly driven by culturally conservative critiques of the liberal status quo. 

taken as a whole, as illiberal as trudeau is, he remains the least illiberal of the three, and that is a problem that canadians are going to need to grapple with, lest they wake up one day in a different culture, without realizing it ever happened.

i would strongly suspect that the test incursion into iran by israel yesterday was a data gathering exercise rather than a retaliatory strike. it would be rational to expect the israelis to test iran's defenses as a preliminary step rather than just start shooting missiles.

that said, did i say 100 missiles for tit-for-tat? i meant 350 missiles. those 350 missiles need not all land in iran; indeed, israel's self-interest would suggest most of them should be targeted at hezbollah. that is a large balance for israeli payback still to come, nonetheless.

it's not clear that there are 350 targets in iran worth hitting. it is clear there are 350 targets in lebanon worth hitting.

i am also disappointed by the disability tax credit's $200/month, which it does not appear as though i will qualify for because i don't have a disability tax credit. somebody needs to explain to ms. freeland that she missed the point of the legislation; i would not consider this to be a response to the legislation, and would expect further steps from the government, perhaps after a change in finance minister.

however, i've been trying to get the idea across for quite a long time that the primary issue facing disabled people in this country is not a lack of income but a lack of subsidized housing. it is not a good idea to just give us more money and tell us to go spend it in the market. there is  a distinct lack of infrastructure in this country regarding housing for those with disabilities.

if you give me more money, some rentier (like my landlord) will find a way to take it from me and, in the end, it's just another corporate handout to the rentier class. state aid should be structural and not in the form of bursaries.

so, yes, i agree that it's not what i was hoping for, but energy is better spent getting more subsidized housing built, anyways. this is a problem the society needs to build it's way out of, not one it should throw money at.

i remember when the united states published it's missile defense plans and showed everybody that the wreckage would fall harmlessly, outside of america's borders. somebody had to explain to dubya that the map showed a direct hit on the canadian city of edmonton, as collateral damage.

the kingdom of jordan has been very clear regarding it's motive in shooting down iranian missiles: it was to protect it's airspace. this ought to be read literally, as the jordanians had the choice of shooting these projectiles down outside of jordan or watching the united states and israel shoot them down inside jordan, with jordanian citizens as collateral damage.

the speaker of the ontario legislature is correct to ban the keffiyeh during debates. it is customary in british-canadian culture that political symbols not be worn during debates. i applaud the speaker for enforcing british canadian cultural values within british canadian political institutions. foreigners should be expected to follow our rules and conform to our culture, not the other way around.

that said, i also understand that this decision is being made within the context of certain laws being passed in quebec, which, as is so often the case, is ahead of the rest of the country. i have been making the argument for many years that the hijab is a political symbol and should be banned from the public sector workforce for that precise, exact reason. while it would not exactly by a ballot issue for me, i would like to see ontario adopt some of the laws that quebec has recently adopted regarding religious symbols in the workplace. perhaps this is a first step towards that desired and inevitable (and correct, in a secular society) end point.

the iranian strike on israel, as unsuccessful as it appears to have been, is a major escalation that requires a proportionate response. a proportionate response would certainly be a tit-for-tat retaliation, which i might propose as a dominant strategy. the israeli military knows it's game theory. iran does not have anything remotely similar to the same defence capabilities, and a strike of this size would consequently do severe damage to the islamo-fascist "republic" of iran. israel now essentially has an excuse to send 100 or so missiles into iran, at targets that are at it's discretion. i might suggest taking out the fucking ayatollah.

i think the biden administration is making a pr error in taking a step away from israel's response. there is a loud and vocal and well-financed and powerful arab-american lobby in the united states that tends to get what it wants, but it does not represent popular opinion. the biden administration may find the polling shocking, but it's a reflection of it's own incompetence. i would expect massive popular support for an american strike on iran, and for it to cross into both parties. i'd guess 80-85% of americans would support nato bombing in retaliation.

i was exceedingly vocally opposed to the attack on iraq in 2003, but i've tended to be cautiously in favour of military-backed regime change in iran. this is going to come up. the situations are not only not comparable, they are diametrically opposite; iraq was a secular society (run by an asshole dictator, but secular nonetheless) and the only opposition on the ground was religious, whereas iran is a fascist theocracy with a secular opposition movement that could use some air support. i'd be happy to provide a secular and liberal movement on the ground in iran with air support, and i think they can win if we give them it.

however, i expect biden and his cronies to avoid such things with a ten foot pole. the 2003 iraq war remains formative in the post-bush years; biden was a part of the obama administration. obama then thoroughly screwed up iran and nobody wants to deal with it. regime change in iran will require generational change.

as it is, i don't expect israel will require american backing to carry out a vicious tit-for-tat strike, and that should be it's immediate focus. if iran wants to get uppity, israel is going to need to smack it down and show it it's place.

take note of this fact: the russians don't even try to retaliate against israel in syria, because they know they're beat before it starts. iran has russian missile defense systems that are essentially the same as the ones in syria. israel can do what it will in iranian airspace, at will.

for this particular issue, throwing money at government bureaucracy is precisely what is required to solve the problem, as the root cause is a collapse of government bureaucracy in the first place.

that said, the language from the minister makes it clear that this is an election promise and that it probably won't go anywhere.

i'm going to suggest something else: we need ndp governments across the country at the provincial level to deal with housing. it's imperative.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/liberals-release-plan-to-solve-the-housing-crisis-branding-it-as-a-call-to-action-1.6844545

we're trained to act as though all life is sacred and every second matters, and some of us want to bring silly ideas like god into it, but perhaps what we're learning from asking people with poor qualities of life what they actually want is that this value system is in truth deeply flawed.

conservatives are focused on quantity of life and freaking out about people choosing death over life, but the constant in these deaths is extremely poor quality of life. 

maybe the fundamentalists should stop speaking and start listening.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/assisted-death-quadriplegic-quebec-man-er-bed-sore-1.7171209

there's a fair amount of evidence in front of us, and i think ms. qualtrough would make a far better prime minister than ms. freeland.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/overwhelming-support-for-disability-benefit-complicated-by-slow-implementation-survey-finds-1.6837126

we legitimately need a zombie-vampire flick about jesus, ala life of brian, that uses the new testament as the primary script, complete with gore-filled depictions of the crucifixion. in the end, zombie-vampire jesus should come back to have his revenge on the common soldiery.

i also want a scene where he's having gay group sex with his disciples and makes a bad pun about the second cumming.

i actually don't want to come down on a side in this debate about fourplexes. it seems like a good idea to enforce fourplexes as a right until you stop to do the actual math and realize that it wouldn't even actually help.

we don't need fourplexes, we need massive skyscrapers. we need to be building up; way up.

if the government wants us to be as populated as megacities like london and new york, we're going to have to build like london and new york, and (with the single exception of the very downtown core of toronto), we just don't. we think it's not canadian to have that kind of urban density.

well, the population is growing very fast and nobody wants to live in permafrost, alberta. the state made the choice to overpopulate us. now, we have to start building skyscrapers, not fourplexes.

there's a weird narrative that the issue in rafah has to do with the saudis protecting the palestinians. that's odd, as the saudis have never tried to protect the palestinians before.

this guy sisi, however, is a puppet of the saudis, and they would be interested in maintaining stability in egypt, which may be where the arab revolution to overthrow islam eventually happens, one day. egypt is a brutal dictatorship but it's a relatively secular society, and it has to be by popular demand. this shadow caliphate in riyadh wants to keep egypt under control.

but, in fact, the primary concern of the saudis would not be in protecting palestine from israel but rather in ejecting the iranian proxy that is hamas from the mediterranean. the saudis would need to obscure it a little, but their primary rival and enemy is iran, not israel. the saudis and israelis would actually be expected to have common cause in wiping out hamas, but the saudis don't want to destabilize egypt.

i would consequently be skeptical about this idea that the october attack was about trying to undo the saudi-israeli detente, as hamas is a common enemy of the saudis and israel, and the alliance against iran was what the detente was supposed to be about. if anything, what's happening might be better described as the first step of the aforementioned detente, which is something the americans would seek to prevent (as it would upset the balance of power and complicate their strategy of divide and conquer).

the absolute last thing in the world that the americans would want is an alliance between israel and saudi arabia.

jesus was a zombie and a vampire.

that's next level. no wonder people worshiped him.

it's that time of the year, but i was busy and didn't notice it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

israel should be explicit in calling for hamas to surrender.

i can guess hamas' response:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

oops.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the jews are weird. they always have been.

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

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

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

the man was a horrific crook.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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