the courts will get this right in the end, and the kids will be better off for it.
Thursday, February 6, 2025
i'm more than a little bit disgusted and appalled by the idea that i'm supposed to feel bad for rich rock stars and movie stars in los angeles that lost their homes, and donate them money.
doesn't california have any social assistance? but, these people are rich, they wouldn't qualify for anything like that.
i'd tell them to go sleep in a shelter until they can pull themselves up by their own boot straps.
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
i would actually probably support a plan to temporarily depopulate gaza, rebuild it and then move people back in with extremely strict filtering rules (nobody with any remote connection to hamas or islamic jihad, at all), although i think the details right now are rather scant.
i have long called for the gaza strip to be annexed by egypt, but they won't do it.
the country in the region that can best absorb that kind of population transfer is saudi arabia, and they should.
people arguing that this is some kind of infringement on palestinian rights need to understand that there has to be real, long term, substantive consequences for what they did. they have to be collectively punished. they need to be made an example of. there's no other possible outcome.
i have to do this, apparently. it's very stupid, given that there has been no rabit is wolf material in over 20 years and never will be any more rabit is wolf material.
but, sean hansel is officially now kicked out of rabit is wolf for being a phony piece of shit asshole, meaning the band now only has one remaining member, jessica murray.
*shrug*.
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
my best guess is that trump wanted to wait until after the super bowl to increase the price of avocados.
again: they've told us why they're doing this. they want to tax non-americans and use that to replace domestic tax revenue. the tariffs are a revenue source. it's really not about jobs.
of course, american consumers end up paying the tariffs, but that doesn't seem to compute with them.
Monday, February 3, 2025
now the statement is
"representing some 57 per cent of Canadian food imports."
the previous statement was:
“We import about 60 per cent of our food from the U.S"
these are very different statements. i believe that 60% of the food we import is from the united states, and that it's mostly junk food. i don't believe that we import 60% of our food from the united states.
we import about 30% of our food and grow or raise about 70% of it domestically. .6*.3 = 0.18. so, we import about 18% of our food from the united states.
seems like there was a fail at the editing stage, there.
trump is probably vaguely right in pointing out that we don't import american agriculture - specifically - but it's because they do things like inject their beef with crazy hormones, and that's gross. we should clarify why we have restrictions on american agriculture products, and it's because they're unhealthy.
i don't want unhealthy american meat and dairy products in my food supply and i would support continuing to block them from importing their food here until they make their food less unhealthy, even if they tariff us over it.
i can't make sense of this better than anybody else.
it would seem as though trump has different expectations from mexico and canada, and that this is neither about immigrants nor about drugs in either case. mexico has done what trump wanted and canada hasn't.
or maybe trump just hates trudeau and doesn't hate sheinbaum. that might be closer to the truth.
what this is about is offshoring taxation. they've been clear. canada is more wealthy, per capita, than mexico. canada is consequently a better country to tax than mexico. it might be difficult to actually do the math on that and have it make sense, but trump doesn't seem to be doing much math, or seem to be very good at math. this is likely something approximating the actual thought process.
tariffs on mexico would really drive up the cost of food in the united states. a lot. that would not be true about tariffs on canada.
trump is a bully looking for somebody's lunch to steal, and we're the easier target, with less consequences.
the price to rent a room in windsor is down about 40% since last year, but it has yet to translate to apartments.
things are moving in the right direction. the tariffs will actually help me.
i have a hearing for damages on april 3rd but i don't know if i can hold out here long enough or if the landlords will pay it if i win.
as per usual, it does not look like hamas is going to abide by the agreement it just agreed to and is going to try to extract unrealistic concessions before releasing the remaining hostages.
you can't argue, debate, reason, rationalize, negotiate or do business with these people. they're not rational actors.
Sunday, February 2, 2025
these changes are oppressive and stupid and intended to appeal to a political base, but do they actually make any substantive difference to anybody?
i have a nexus card that has my legal gender on it, which is female. it was just renewed in the period between trump being elected and taking office and got here a few days ago. it doesn't say x or t, it says f. i'm not going to be crossing the border immediately, but i'm curious as to how the border will interpret that.
i was told i had to update my documents to reflect my legal name change in ontario, and i did. if the americans have now flip-flopped and insist i revert, i will then have different legal genders in canada and the united states, and i don't expect that there's going to be a logical way to deal with that.
“We import about 60 per cent of our food from the U.S"
that doesn't make sense to me and, if it is true at all, it must refer almost entirely to prepackaged junk food. the only items in my diet that are clearly american in origin are oranges and doritos, and i an get the oranges from mexico, i'm sure.
i would actually support increasing taxes on pre-packaged junk food as a public health policy.
the key idea i want to get across is that the tactic should be to put steep export taxes on the "giffen goods" that are perfectly or nearly perfectly inelastic in the american market (uranium, some other minerals, electricity and oil) and use the revenue to socialize the losses. that would actually be a productive retaliation, in that it would transfer the cost to american capital. tariffs on american goods in canada might help some local producers, but it doesn't generate the revenue streams the government needs to socialize the losses.
if the americans want us to act like an ally and maintain the tariffs on china, they should lift the tariffs on us.
if the anericans want us to buy military gear, they should lift their tariffs on us. there should be a complete moratorium on all us defense industry purchases until the tariffs are lifted.
something that's going to happen is americans from the northern states are going to start buying mexican produce in canada to evade the tariffs. will the border cops crack down on that?
further, does canada want to maintain it's tariffs on china, now? if chinese goods become cheaper to buy in canada, that could also generate a market.
there is talk of "restricting exports of minerals". that's not the right approach.
as i mentioned previously, an export tax on uranium or hydro-electricity would be the superior approach, even superior to retaliatory tariffs. the idea would be take the money generated by the export taxes and use it to pay for social programs from unemployed canadian workers, and generally socialize the costs.
restricting the export of minerals just harms our own industry, which is what trump wants. that would be senseless.
my diet is mostly fresh produce and i buy for price, with few counterexamples.
in my fridge currently, i have:
from canada:
- beets
- carrots
- kale
- tomato
- red pepper
from mexico:
- mangos
- limes
- avocados
- i often buy guava from mexico, but not currently
- i believe that the cara cara oranges i often buy are also from mexico (none currently)
- blackberries
from peru:
- strawberries
- blueberries
from chile:
- raspberries
- cherries
from costa rica:
- bananas
from italy:
- kiwis
from china:
- garlic
"made in canada from imported ingredients":
- walmart brand not from concentrate orange juice. i would guess it says this because walmart sources it's oranges from all over the world, not just from florida. it may generally be mostly mexican oranges. walmart canada will import the cheapest oranges.
- walmart pineapple. is it from hawaii? probably not, actually. walmart canada likely sources the cheapest pineapple on an open market.
probably imported from the united states, although it doesn't actually say:
- tropicana grapefruit juice
product of the usa:
- oranges
- broccoli (but i often buy canadian broccoli)
the reality is that mexico is a major producer of citrus fruit and should be able to replace american oranges in the canadian market very easily.
that leaves the tropicana grapefruit juice, which markets itself as from florida but has also recently undergone some shrinkflation. i bought this on sale, but i had recently moved to the pc brand, which doesn't say where it sources it's grapefruits from but probably is "made in canada from imported ingredients".
we certainly import most of our fruits and vegetables, especially in the winter. however, we may be over-estimating our reliance on american imports, specifically. i eat mostly produce, and i don't think i need american fruits or vegetables at all. "buy canadian" really isn't the best tactic, if you're mostly buying produce from mexico or south america in the first place.
Saturday, February 1, 2025
"buy canadian" is not a good idea and is not helpful. i don't want to go to war with the american people or american workers, i want to shift costs back to american capital. my solidarity is with the international working class, not with bourgeois nationalist politics.
a better idea is "buy the cheapest options", and that is no doubt what people are going to actually do.
just pick the cheapest things you can buy and let ricardan equivalence work itself out. it doesn't matter where it's from and don't be worked up into thinking it does.
do you know who predicted this outcome of nafta?
pierre trudeau.
Pierre Trudeau called the FTA “a monstrous swindle, under which the Canadian government has ceded to the United States of America a large slice of the country’s sovereignty over its economy and natural resources.” John Turner called the FTA “the Sale of Canada Act.”
chretien and martin flip-flopped on this, and the younger trudeau has been an aggressive advocate and supporter of what we call free trade (which is really an investor's rights agreement, not a free trade agreement. most tariffs were already removed by 1985.). we have spent the last 40 years allowing nafta to destroy our sovereignty and dismantle our economy.
now, the americans are changing their mind, and we're utterly helpless. the president is even suggesting annexation. pierre trudeau was right.
we should have listened to the smarter incarnation of the liberal party, and not the dumber incarnation of it, but here we are, with the younger trudeau about to be thrown out of his party's leadership and the need to re-engage with the since abandoned policies of the elder and smarter one.
if we had spent the last 40 years preparing for this inevitability, we might not be in such an awful position.
as it is, this is going to be brutal. expect 30% unemployment in some cities by summer. expect double digit inflation. the only thing we can do is socialize the losses and wait it out, and i don't think we're going to do it. the elite is going to throw the weak overboard and watch them drown.
every leftist has the right to say "i told you so", but only for ten minutes. let's not dwell on this, let's focus on adjusting.
Friday, January 31, 2025
i'd like to reiterate that an ugly, stupid loser that i went to high school with is apparently trying to steal my internet sites.
my name is jessica parent. my birth name was jason parent. all of the pictures on this site, all of the blogs, all of the video content, all of the music, etc is mine.
sean hansel is somebody that i went to high school with. he has had absolutely nothing to do with any of the vlogs or blogs and i haven't even spoken to him at all in a very long time. he did some guest vocals for me on songs i wrote that never got past the demo stage, and were not used in any final product. bluntly, i decided his lyrics were stupid and got rid of them. i did use some noise generation (harmonica, ring modulator) in the final product of two songs and various remixes of them.
there are no pictures of sean on any of these sites, with the exception of one picture on the cover art for the imaginary tour demo.
i don't know why he is doing this, but he's basically a retard and i'm struggling to find some way to get him to fuck off.
Thursday, January 30, 2025
Monday, January 27, 2025
as a transgender female, i have absolutely no interest in joining the military in any country and would like to extend a warmfelt "thank you" to donald trump for ensuring i never have to worry about being conscripted by them if the americans decide to invade us and make us a state.
but, you'd think trump would want us to sign up to use us as cannon fodder. i'm not sure he's thought that through, as usual.
Saturday, January 25, 2025
Friday, January 24, 2025
i'm no free market advocate, but that's exactly it. ricardo was a socialist. tariffs are neither foundationally good or bad, what they are is hard, and what the americans are threatening to do is dumb. let them do it and let the ricardan models work themselves out. they will lose market share in the end.
the theory of free trade does not tell us to retaliate, it tells us to avoid retaliating. it's really economics 101. canada shouldn't get feisty and act like rocky, it should be smart and listen to the academics and avoid a fight.
...except in a small, very targeted manner, that is designed to make american businesses absorb the losses rather than canadian consumers.
so, he understands how tariffs work. good.
the next step is realizing that responding with socialism by using subsidies to save canadian jobs is a better approach than generating a recession by responding with competition by using retaliatory tariffs is. with a caveat.
there has to be some reaction. but if they're going to punch us in the face, we shouldn't just punch them back. we could, for example, try to blow up their house, instead.
if we react by collectivizing the losses via a covid-like subsidy system and then sue them through the wto for unfair trade practices, they could even end up paying for it in the end. we could then even flip the script by trying to undercut their steel and lumber businesses through increased government subsidies, which could drive american businesses to lose market share in the united states itself. we could increase subsidies to dairy farmers. we could bring back the wheat board.
who pays for the tariffs? americans pay for the tariffs! that should be the goal of canadian government policy - to make sure americans get the bill for this, in the end, and not us. the best way to do that is to use socialism to collectivize the losses by shifting it to debt, and to avoid being competitive in trying to find a way to spread it out. we can't compete. the sprott guy is right; that's a dumb idea.
retaliatory tariffs should be restricted to things that hurt american policy objectives, like defence and medical spending. sanctions on uranium exports, for example, would be the kind of thing that we should do, while we really shouldn't tax ourselves to import ketchup or orange juice. parts of canada have a major scurvy problem. import taxes on orange juice is in truth an incredibly stupid idea.
i would normally strongly oppose subsidizing the tar sands, but it's a better idea to let trump increase gas taxes and socialize the losses than it is to try to prevent canadian crude from getting to american refineries. americans won't accept increases in gas prices for very long. they didn't vote for that. they'll throw the bums out in two years, and that would be a good outcome for canada.
if trump wants to charge americans more and increase inflation for american consumers, we should just let him do it with a minimal response - except things that specifically hurt american policy objectives like sanctions on uranium - and wait for the midterms. we shouldn't get into a fist fight with somebody that is stronger than us.
i don't think elon musk even knows what a sieg heil even is. you can't assign that to him.
more interesting to me is that his body language, as usual, looks like that of a young child, like a little kid playing with his toy trucks. there's a certain stiffness in their shoulders you only see with young boys under the age of 10 and musk has it constantly. it's quite apparent when he speaks publicly.
i would diagnose him with a mental disability from a distance; perhaps not autism, exactly, but some level of delayed development, certainly. you can't miss it. he's blatantly retarded.
it speaks to the ability, or lack of ability, of the market system to effectively make choices based on merit. capitalism simply doesn't select the best or the brightest, it more frequently selects the most immoral or the most ruthless. sometimes, it outright selects retards that succeed because they don't understand what they're doing instead of because they do, or because they've done something better or at a higher level. an actual scientific analysis is that markets frequently generate random outcomes.
the irony is that this movement wants to eject any kind of social control mechanism and instead let the market pick winners and losers (which actually makes the market the socialist control mechanism. actually functioning markets are the absolute worst kind of vicious socialism.). well, who did the market pick? the answer is these guys. is that the government we want? the society we want? the culture we want? the world we want? really?
i might want to suggest something rather different than this as an outcome, and it would require a centralized control mechanism other than market competition making choices about what it perceives as "merit". these guys are just wrong. this outcome is shit.
how should enlightened people approach immigration in the next four years and activism around it, for better or worse?
i think it's important to realize that this is happening because the system - both in the united states and here in canada - requires some reform. you can't scapegoat migrant workers without the existence of economic uncertainty, and the cultural issues exposing themselves are entirely real. i'm currently fighting with neighbours that moved into my duplex and expect me to abide by islamic law because there are muslims in the house. that's not how we do things here, and isn't how we're going to start doing them, and i'm not about to start abiding by islamic law, but it will be if they get their way and people don't realize that the legal system of democratically enacted laws and common law (judge made law that can change, and is not fixed to the dark ages because god says so) needs to be supported and won't continue to exist if it isn't. if you don't support your culture, it won't exist anymore.
trump is kind of right in a sense; you need boundaries, or you don't have a country, don't have a culture and don't have a society. the question is how to do it fairly and reasonably. you don't need to mirror the islamic extremists to protect your culture; indeed, it's better if you don't.
activists should insist that anything and everything coming from trump and the republicans utilizes due process. there are people that won't be able to stay. they need a fair process.
however, there are also currently very real economic and cultural concerns at play that the left needs to adjust and react to, rather than kneejerk or dig in on. i want a secular left to support, so i don't have to juggle the fact that i'm not in the same class as the right-wing political base and there are economic ramifications of that with the reality that that very truth demonstrates economic value in specific right-wing xenophobic positions. i don't want to be forced to balance that. i want a more realist left, like currently exists in quebec.
the canadian oil industry - and this has been parroted by our government - has for many years argued that the americans are better off buying oil from us than, say, saudi arabia. who would argue that?
i watched part of the davos speech by accident tonight; it came up on autoplay after i rebooted on a computer that i don't log into.
canada is going to have to take a step back from it's previous argument, at least for the next four years, because it is abundantly clear, and doubled down by his statements at davos, that donald trump thinks that canada is a morally inferior culture to saudi arabia, and the saudis are the more ethical choice. donald trump does not like trudeau, but he's very good friend with the saudi royals.
some substantive non-zero subset of the very conservative united states agrees with him.
she's come off as incredibly bored before, like they have to pump her full of fentanyl in exchange for having her do this shit job, or like she was out all night partying and slept walked into work.
this is something like what i was trying to say and like what danielle smith is also trying to say. it might be good politics to want to go toe-to-toe with the yankees, and just react by eating more spinach, but it's not a very smart approach.
carney has been annoyingly quiet. he should be a better source of answers right now.
we might have to do this but we should do everything possible to avoid it and we don't want to be excited about it.
google actually couldn't find me a picture of gretzky in a covid mask, so maybe all of the bitching actually got to him, subconsciously. you'd think somebody snapped something somewhere, right? apparently not. i found one of his daughter, but that doesn't count.
i wish i could find one, because i would then have to ask trump to go off on gretzky for wearing a surgical mask in public. it would be required.
actually, i think she's on to something with the comment about donald trump complaining about whiners; is donald trump really just america's don cherry? we understand don cherry, right? trump can't be that hard. he just needs to blow off elon musk and get a ron maclean, clearly.
and tell gretzky to get rid of the fucking face mask. it's european or muslim or something.
Thursday, January 23, 2025
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
mark carney is a kind of an old fashioned keynesian liberal and chrystia freeland is very much a post-reagan neo-liberal. they actually represent very different ideologies.
carney would not be my first choice for much of anything, and it's almost comical that he's trying to run as an outsider, but he's the soft left candidate and people are going to have to get behind him.
Monday, January 20, 2025
i actually slept all day, but i was waiting to see what the tariffs look like before making a decision on whether i'm going to try to find an apartment in windsor for march or not.
right now, it's looking like i'm going to need to move my items into storage some time in february and then look for an apartment while sleeping on the floor in here for march 1st before moving into a hotel for march 1st, but i do have one further appeal path (again, i'm being blocked by something behind the scenes. the court of appeal is behaving extremely inappropriately. i could potentially file a complaint against the registrar, but if the court just ignores me then i'm going to run out of time, and all i can do in response is point out that the courts in canada are corrupt and broken.) and i want to make some attempt to look for something, first.
i spent the weekend starting to pack up and i'm about 30% packed. i need to be about 90% packed within a few days, so i get up and leave on very short notice, if i need to.
i am desperately in need of any amount of cash because i may have to stay in a hotel for a few months, so if you want to buy something at bandcamp or send it to me via the donation button on the side or just via interac or paypal to death.to.koalas@gmail.com, that would be exceedingly appreciated.
while i have been less productive recently than i'd like to be because these disgusting arab animals won't leave me alone, packing everything up and leaving it in storage for 4-6 months while i wait for subsidized housing doesn't help anybody. it looks like it's going to be reality, unfortunately, because the rental market in canada is almost impossible to rent in on disability, and i am both incapable of participating in the labour market and entirely disinterested in doing so. i'd rather sleep outside than waste my life doing pointless work.
disability will give me enough to pay the $200 or so for storage, and i'll need to find somewhere to sleep for cheap and just work on my writing until they can move me in to city housing somewhere.
Thursday, January 16, 2025
"are you with us or against us?"
this kind of stupidity should never be tolerated, but should especially not be tolerated precisely when you need some kind of subtlety of thought, and not by people that are supposed to be liberals.
trudeau should be embarrassed by his blatant lack of intelligence, and should be roundly condemned for it.
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
the media and the liberal party are advancing this kind of groupthink that puts this vague idea of "canada first" without defining what that means.
what does it mean?
the truth is it doesn't mean anything, it's just typical empty platitudes from trudeau and his cronies. it means trudeau first. it means the liberal party apparatchiks first.
that language needs to be rejected; we need to be putting canadians first, not canada first and there's a tremendous difference in those two statements. think what your country can do for you, not what you can do for your country. individual people are important; collectives, countries, governments and parties are not important.
the policies that the state will advance to purportedly help the country will devastate the people that live in it. these policies might help some abstraction of the investor class outside the country, but they won't help the people that live in it. this has been the problem with so-called free trade from the start; it prioritizes an investor class while devastating actual people. retaliatory tariffs are just more of that.
danielle smith is actually right; there are ways to push back without retaliating, and retaliating should be a last resort, not a first resort. the state is not acting to preserve itself. there are people involved, and retaliation is going to harm those people more than it helps them.
it may become necessary, but it should be seen as a requirement that is arrived at with extreme caution, and not as some kind of saving of face or as a way to advance an ego in a scrap or something. we lose, by definition, if we retaliate.
the canadian government may also want to stop for a second and think through what it's doing, which is providing the americans with a pretext to invade, exactly when they're talking about it. would the united states seize a hydro factory if we shut it down? well?
let's see exactly what they do, but we should have social assistance ready first and retaliation ready second. it's probably not the smart approach.
does mark carney have any policy ideas to put forward that would help canadians - people. humans - avoid the brunt of tariffs without poking the elephant?
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
if windsor loses 50-100K jobs, rent is going to crash.
i don't want to commit. i want to wait. i'm being forced to sign before a bubble implodes and i don't want to.
the court of appeal appears to be under instructions to not file my appeal. it's just on hold. i can't get it it to move. i don't see any reason for it or understand it. somebody is telling them not to and they're listening.
there's something going on behind the scenes.
that was not a fun weekend. i've been having difficulty staying awake since thursday, and need to be alert right now. i seem to have been drugged and can deduce that it's some utterly retarded "therapy" designed to "cleanse" me. ugh.
fucking morons.
this is coming up and i want to reiterate that trump has been abundantly clear that he wants to outsource taxation. this is intended as a permanent revenue source to keep the government running. canada's going to pay to keep the bureaucracy afloat and the 80s will never die and burn. burn. burn.
it's only crazy because nobody does it because it would produce instability. canadians don't really want to pay the bills in washington and may find alternate arrangements. it's more irresponsible than insane, but if trump ever sort of cared a little, he clearly doesn't any more.
the next administration will prefer a more predictable revenue stream, but trump's thing is make believe. it's entirely self-contained and entirely consistent and we're going to have to actually understand it.
trump perpetuates the 80s forever by giving you everything for nothing by exploiting the easily exploitable, which he's decided that canada is, and which he's right to decide; we are.
Saturday, January 11, 2025
he's a retard.
the next election is going to be about jobs for a lot of canadians and about the cost of living more generally. as economists have repeatedly pointed out, more canadians benefit economically from carbon taxation than are harmed by it. this is a losing strategy, and it's only working because the prime minister is so inherently unlikable.
everybody else should ignore his tirades against climate change as the out of touch ramblings of a man lost in the distant past, which is what conservatives tend to be, yesterday's men, and instead focus on what canadians want them to focus on, which is getting the cost of living down in a substantive, real way that will actually make a difference, such as by building more public housing.
Friday, January 10, 2025
i want to post an update about my views on palestine. there's no new information in this post, but i want to clarify it, moving into the new administration.
i was using the language of 'genocide' to describe israel's activity in the west bank as early as 2010, and specifically to counter the use of the term 'apartheid'. you don't hear talk of apartheid any more. maybe i got my point across, which is that israel did not want a system of apartheid, it wanted to deport them to jordan. the policy on gaza is in flux, but it used to be that gaza was seen as outside of israel because it was the philistine regions; that's insane, but it's what the israelis actually perceive of as real. there was a period when kerry was secretary of state when he tried to organize an apartheid system in order to create jobs for palestinians by bringing in israeli industry (essentially enslaving palestinians for israeli benefit), which actually would have been helpful. actual apartheid in the south african meaning of the term would have been a betterment of the material conditions of most palestinians, who are being slowly assimilated or expelled. the israelis rejected these proposals under the grounds that they wanted the jobs to go to israelis, or to african migrants (of which there are a lot of in israel). israel has not wanted a system of enslavement or apartheid at all, it wanted to get rid of them, and it was a struggle to try to correct the language.
now that activists are using more correct language about genocide in the west bank, i've once again moved past them, and i think i am again ahead of the curve. we'll find out. i also have begun to support a policy of annihilation in gaza, in response to the terrorist attacks and continued societal support of hamas. i don't see any other option but to wipe these people out, the way the romans had to wipe out the carthaginians, or, indeed, the jews themselves. they won't adapt, change or evolve; the other option is to die, and that's the bed they've made for themselves. it's their own fault.
palestine has no likelihood of success of obtaining statehood and that idea needs to be abandoned. the gaza strip should remain under israeli occupation until it can be annexed by egypt, who should be responsible for security. let the arabs rebuild the strip as they will, as a part of egypt. the saudis apparently want a port on the mediterranean.
the west bank should be annexed by israel, but that does not mean continuing oppression of the people that live there. if i'm ahead of the curve, it's in realizing that this is a political issue internal to israel and it has been for a long time, nor am i the first person to observe this. people that have solidarity with the rights of moderate palestinians in a secular society need to focus on civil rights issues inside israel. the comparison is not to south africa, it's to the southern united states, and a strong civil rights movement could succeed in ways that a sovereignty movement is doomed to fail. they don't need a nelson mandela, they need a martin luther king.
this issue appears set to morph and redefine itself yet again over the next four years. it should emerge as a civil rights issue in the state of israel. they're going to need to learn to respect each other and to get along, which means accepting things like jewish access to the western wall and the temple mount, and things like palestinian land rights, on equal terms.
you're allowed to disagree with me. please avoid mischaracterizing me.
the stock market just crashed in response to strong jobs data.
the entire theory of this stupid thing needs to be rewritten from scratch, and it probably needs to be wiped out and started fresh with stricter rules about how it works. it has no resemblance whatsoever to what it's supposed to be at all; it's a casino for the wealthy, that foolish middle class people continue to lose money in under out of date perceptions about what it is.
i would support a constitutional ban on government communicating with any media, including social media, in both canada and the united states. no government official should ever attempt to communicate with any independent body about the dissemination of any information at all.
the vaccines were probably pretty safe, but we don't actually know, and we won't know for a while. my larger concern is less that they were unsafe and more that they didn't actually work. it was helpful for media to try to explain that these were not traditional vaccines, and that the population was undergoing an experiment that most people did not fully understand that they were participating in.
america has a history of making draconiain decisions when it's in crisis that are condemned by history, such as, for example, it's periodic crackdowns on union organizers, including putting eugene debs in jail for dissenting on america's role in world war one. the period of investigation into government abuses in both canada and the united states during the pandemic is just beginning and needs to be rigorously and thoroughly conducted, and parties that made mistakes need to be held accountable.
there should be changes made to the law in both countries that prevent this kind of interference from happening in the next crisis we go through. the important thing is that we learn from our mistakes.
canada could also make use of the louisiana territory and, given that it was initially french-speaking, there's a strong argument that it should be ours in the first place. this would annex most of the mississippi basin and rebuild the old trade routes south from detroit, through saint-louis and nouveau orleans, who should subsequently be renamed to their francophone titles.
annexing nouveau orleans would give canada significant refinery capacity, which it should immediately dismantle in order to meet our climate targets.
yes, putin has been in office a long time.
but, from a foreign policy perspective, it's sergei lavrov that has been the more important figure, and the one that is going to create a larger void when he moves on.
and, yes, these guys are going to move on pretty soon. the russians will not allow for repeat gerontocracy; they made that mistake already.
i did point out that trump actually kind of doesn't like the jews much, which is going to be an interesting point of conflict with his party. if you wanted somebody to force the jews to do what they're fucking told, trump is probably your best choice in decades, but it comes with the caveat that he's dragging around the kind of anti-semitic conspiracy theories at the back of his head that we haven't seen in high office since the days of lbj and richard nixon. netanyahu is clearly frustrated and annoyed by this and is trying to walk a fine line but he's going to need to end up going over trump's head to the pentagon.
conversely, as trump lines up to arrange a meeting to suck putin's cock, it's important to note that, contrary to fake left propaganda, putin and his cronies do not like donald trump very much, and putin is not very excited about the change of power that's about to take place. the democrats want to make it look like putin is pulling trump's strings, but it's actually the other way around. putin rather pointedly endorsed harris, and he meant it. trump is a loose cannon and if the russians want to avoid anything it's crazy cowboy lunatics in the white house that they can't get a clear read on. the russians hate unpredictability, and trump is nothing if not unpredictable. this is actually kind of a disaster from their perspective.
i actually suspect that a quick meeting between putin and trump could result in a horrific outcome, and i would advise the russians to stall. don't let trump come running in, excitedly looking for a reacharound. you don't want to take advantage of him, you want to avoid him.
maybe little marco can have a chat with the old purveyor of nyet, first.
Thursday, January 9, 2025
my immediate reaction was that harris was a tremendous downgrade in terms of electability. it's hard to peddle in hypotheticals, and there are counter arguments (like polling data, which should be convincing), but biden simply had stronger fundamentals in the key states and he almost certainly would have done better than harris did.
biden had a chance. harris had no chance from day one, which is what i tried to tell you on day one.
there's nothing stopping biden from running again, except probably his party.
Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Tuesday, January 7, 2025
what is canada?
the answer is that canada is the part of british north america that wanted to stay in the british empire. it's not an "artificially drawn line", it's a line that was drawn by canadians and defended with our lives. canadians were on the other side of the american revolution; in fact, the country was largely unpopulated before 1776 (there were francophones and natives, but the population density was extremely low), and was populated primarily by british loyalists fleeing from the american revolution, and moving further back behind british lines that could be better defended.
one of the major things that the united states was founded over was the concept of property rights. to this day, there is really no clearly discernible concept of property rights in canadian law.
nowadays, canadians aren't likely to pick up their muskets to fight off americans that want to assert what many canadians think is the depraved and stupid concept of property rights, but we do like our health care system and we don't like gun ownership very much.
there are similarities, and i wonder if trudeau didn't say something stupid to trump when he went to florida that has generated this mess, but we are not americans and we have dramatic cultural differences that are not going to get smoothed over very easily. america should not push us too far. it might not like the result.
we are very much to the united states as the scots are to the brits.
america may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom.
it looks like both canada and the united states are going into recession in the next year. the truth is that we're already there.
i previously argued that the government of canada's sole focus should be on stopping that from happening. there are certain positions we need to take in response to trump - we need to stop a surge of migrants moving into canada from the united states and put pressure on the americans to police their own borders, we should be pressuring the americans to stop the flow of weapons into canada and we should be putting a complete freeze on military spending until they lift these threats - but that's about asserting sovereignty in the face of a clear threat to it, that's not going to stop the recession generated by these tariffs.
a trade war is not in our collective interests. we don't have to do that. tariffs are, in fact, generally considered an act of war. why would we buy military equipment from a country that just declared war on us? that's not rational, and these tariffs are not a rational tactic to extract concessions from an ally. if the americans are going to act irrationally, we should take that irrational behaviour to it's logical conclusion. this is an act of war, and let's treat it like one.
something the government could do is go into a war economy and try to absorb the costs via running debt rather than via punitive tariffs. we'd then try to collect that via action at the wto, in the end. that would save us from going into a recession.
however, as i'm dealing with housing issues and continue to be irritated by the cost of rent, i need to ask: would i benefit from a lengthy recession? the truth is i would, if i can hold off here for a while longer and it drives the cost of rent down. in windsor, the economy is highly dependent on the auto industry. if we see layoffs, the rent will come down. a lot. and potentially quite fast. tariffs may create inflation in goods, but they should also drive down rent, and we actually really all need that right now, as the rentier class has made out like bandits in canada over the last ten years and it's by design, not accident.
what class is trudeau in? the rentier class.
the last round was a phony war, but we're about to go into a real conflict and it's certainly going to hurt.
maybe i should be quiet and step back and wait it out.
Monday, January 6, 2025
so, i'm watching the news as i'm eating.
justin trudeau got fired. that's what happened.
but, the news keeps talking about "not enough runaway" for the next liberal leader, and i want to say "so, the liberals have enough time to take off, eh?".
the next liberal leader is almost certainly going to get pummeled. if they can put it off until the fall, maybe they have a chance, but probably not. this isn't a job many people should want and i would try to wait a round if i were in the list, but people are arrogant and we'll see what they do.
once again, netanyahu is the lone voice of reason in a middle east that, under biden, has taken a swing towards complete madness. biden has completely ruined the fucking world, which is what i told you that the abject fucking idiot would do.
....and i don't suspect that the new administration is going to be a force of stability, either.
so, raise that israeli flag - it's going to be four more years of bombing bearded barbarians, as they are forced to accept america's abandoned responsibility for saving western culture from collapse at the hands of the backwards march of islamic barbarism.
i vehemently oppose and strenuously condemn this decision in the strongest words possible.
there should be no lifting of sanctions of any sort until there's a pathway to democracy.
from what i can see, this new regime appears to be worse than the previous one and should be treated with more severe sanctions than the previous one, not with lifting of sanctions.
this is a regime that just removed evolution from the school curriculum. that's what we're dealing with. they should be completely shunned and rejected by the international community, until the syrian people can rise up and free themselves from their tyrannical and fanatical imposition of backwards, dark age rules.
i want the conservative party to think honestly about what's going to actually happen when polievre comes face to face with trump.
they've got him lifting weights. they've got gel in his hair. they took his glasses off, which just makes him squint.
there was a saying about a pig in lipstick.
pierre polievre is a nerd; an actual nerd, a legit nerd. justin trudeau is not a nerd. trump will see this and polievre is just going to get beat up and pushed around.
one might want to take note that the guy that looks stable in the house is a real life version of stephen colbert, while polievre is a parody of colbert.
canada has a problem: we need a change of government, and we don't have an acceptable government in waiting, and it's the opposition's fault. polievre cannot be pm. singh cannot be pm. canadians will come face to face with this very soon.
we might be stuck with the banker and he might be the only responsible choice and it might actually hold for a few more years.
Friday, January 3, 2025
trudeau does something when he talks about his role in politics that you will hear from almost nobody else: he calls it a job. routinely. reflexively. casually.
most politicians go out of their way to avoid doing that because they want you to think they work for you. not trudeau; he unthinkingly, frequently tells us that he works for him. it doesn't seem to have even crossed his mind to avoid doing that.
for that reason, trying to get rid of trudeau might be extremely difficult. he's not in it for the fame or the power or to try to change the world. it's just a job. he just goes through the motions, just does what they tell him. he seems to want to win, but it doesn't seem like he really cares, or it really matters and i don't think that losing power or losing party leadership will make him quit his job, either.
it seems obvious to everybody else, but it's because they don't quite get it. trudeau is really what's called a career politician in a way that you don't generally see advance past the furthest rows of the back benches.
Wednesday, January 1, 2025
Tuesday, December 31, 2024
it's kind of weird that you'd try and separate electronic music from music theory in the context of high school music. when i took electronic music design in grade 12 - which was in 1999 - one of the assignments in the course was to write a voice-leading arrangement for a beatles song using a program called finale, which is a scorewriting program, and there was a music theory exam as an entrance requirement to the course. i wrote an arrangement to something, which is a harrison track on abbey road. when i took electronic music design at carleton university in 2006, i used the opportunity to generate a better sounding recording of a piano sonata i had written into a scorewriter years earlier.
electronic music design isn't possible to engage in without a solid foundation in music theory, as using the software competently requires understanding how to read and write music, as that is how the software operates. midi is a system that transmits information about scored music; you need a score to use midi.
there's consequently not actually much of a difference in what's being taught. a basic music education using a midi keyboard would still require learning how to read music and apply music theory, you'd just be learning it in the context of the software that uses and in most cases requires that knowledge as a basic starting point.
i do two primary things as a musician. i am a guitarist, first, and that is what people want to see me as. but, when i write a piece of music, 90% of it is written as a score using written music, which is then played back using sequencers. that includes the drums (usually) and any synthesizer parts, but also includes parts written for orchestra, like string and horn parts. if i didn't know how to read music or didn't know anything about music theory, i wouldn't understand how to use the music software that generates the notes.
in that sense, it's actually more important to know basic music theory skills in the modern world of electronic music design than it was in a jazz or rock based world, where you didn't really actually need to know anything about music theory, you just had to have a good ear and be able to wing it. you can't improvise on a laptop in the same way as you can on a saxophone, you have to actually have some idea of what you're doing.
mr. singh certainly has every right in the world to dress and look like a goof if he wants to. that's up to him, that's his right.
and, as a voter, i have every right to tell him i could never vote for somebody of faith for prime minister, and that he clearly wants to take the country in the exact opposite direction that i do, even if i might think some of his policies are less bad than the other guy.
and herein lies the problem: anybody else could take advantage of this situation, but singh can't and the ndp could actually lose seats in an election they should be winning outright.
i mean, if we're actually talking about singh for pm, we have to ask the basic question: why does the guy look like a complete idiot? why does he have a beard down to his knees?
he's not the guy from come together.
no - he thinks he has a magic beard. that's the actual reason. it's like the story of samson in the bible. the facial hair gives him magic powers.
as a voter, how am i expected to react to that truth, when this guy tells me he wants to be prime minister? why wouldn't i just vote for a conservative christian? what's the difference?
the ndp should have planned for this scenario where they ought to be poised for a major breakthrough, but it almost seems as though they didn't, as though they intended to just be a hopeless protest party forever, and almost intentionally designed themselves out of power.
no you can't actually vote for singh for prime minister. just fucking look at the guy. it's a non-starter.
so, now what, then?
liberals at 16%?
canadians have a longstanding hobson's choice. we don't like these guys. at all. we don't have a better option, either
the unseriousness of jagmeet singh as a major political candidate - the guy looks like some kind of barbaric clown that arrived in canada via a doctor who time warp from some time in the dark ages - has, in truth, kept trudeau floating for years. if the ndp could just find somebody electable to run for prime minister that looks like he belongs to this millennia, the liberals would already be out of power by now. but, when placed with a choice between the incompetent trudeau and this creepy looking weirdo terrorist guy singh, who is just not a serious candidate due to his appearance, canadians are left stuck. that's a big part of the reason you're seeing the conservatives running at over 40%, but it's not a serious vote projection, it's a reflection of frustration with the options.
what you might see is an election with extremely low turnout, and what liberals are going to struggle with is going to be trying to get people to vote at all.
there is, however, one thing that should be taken seriously, and it's what the bloc are polling at. ontarians are not likely to swing hard for either the conservatives or the ndp and if the outcome is in the end very bad it will be because we just don't vote at all. conversely, if quebeckers are threatening to swing hard to the bloc, they probably actually will, and that could completely wipe the liberals out.
if the bloc are really running over 10% nationwide, christy clark (who i think is a more serious candidate than chrystia freeland) might want to forget about running for liberal leader and instead consider crossing the floor to the conservative party.
Monday, December 30, 2024
i've been calling on israel to call the kurds.
they seem to want to focus on the greeks, which is interesting.
i have written widely about the liberation of constantinople being the end of a historical process, as turkey is a fake country full of illegal immigrants and they will eventually be deported back to asia. i've long assumed the russians will be the ones to correct this historical injustice, and there's good reasons for that.
however, in a very real sense, israel has become the new byzantium, particularly in terms of technological unevenness. if you want to get a grasp on what the byzantines were actually like in comparison to the much less advanced and barbarous arab groups in the region, the difference in technology between israel and the other countries in the region is a good demonstration.
i think the israelis are probably more interested in building an airfield on cyprus, for now, which is currently partly under brutal turkish occupation. that would be tremendously advantageous, especially considering that the iranians have broadcast they consider it a part of historical iran (which is nonsense. cyprus is heavily linked to lebanon, and the regions are deeply carthaginian/jewish).
it's become clear enough that the israelis need a turkish containment policy; that's something to keep an eye on.
parliamentary factions have no constitutional restrictions in determining their leaders, and the suggestion that they do is complete and total nonsense.
if the party has the numbers to remove trudeau in a vote, the very clear parliamentary convention is that they can and should and any attempts to restrict that should be interpreted as unconstitutional by the liberal party mps, who should ignore it as null and void.
Friday, December 27, 2024
wayne gretzky is a high school dropout and his career in management was not very successful.
what gretzky was able to do was consistently take advantage of the fact that you had to double team him, which meant there was always somebody else open. if you didn't double team him, he'd skate circles around everybody else, and nobody could catch him; if you did double team him, he'd just find the guy that was open. he'd get more assists in a year than anybody else got points. i don't care about hockey any more, but there was a time where my father basically forced me to care, so i ended up spending a lot of time with the numbers. he'd get like 150 assists a year, because you had to double team him.
what that means is he needed to be on a good team to be effective, and he always was on a good team. the canadian political system doesn't have an elected king like the american system does, it is more of a collective process.
Wednesday, December 25, 2024
the violence in syria is about to get worse than it's been in years.
i'm going to do something nobody else is doing. bizarrely.
i'm going to call for an election in syria and suggest that any lifting of sanctions should be tied to it's successful conclusion. assad said he was trying to transition to a democracy, but couldn't while he was fighting off islamists (although one will note that there were several elections in syria and they seemed to make it clear that the junta was seen as preferable to the islamists by almost all). nonetheless, the lack of elections, accurately or not, was repeatedly cited as a reason sanctions were placed on assad. while i'm perhaps being naive in expecting something less than abject hypocrisy from europe and north america, these new dictators should be held to the same terms.
if we're going to criticize assad for being undemocratic, we should also criticize the islamists for being undemocratic and expect them to hold immediate elections to determine what direction the syrian people want to actually move in - towards wahhabism, as is apparently going to be enforced, or towards secularism and even towards europe itself.
with that in mind, i want to draw attention to trump's recent focus on controlling shipping lanes through panama and greenland. people that read geopolitics shouldn't find this that confusing at all, but the mainstream media is completely confused about it and needs some guidance.
i drew some attention to the monroe doctrine in the context of trump's tendency to tell foreign powers he's not interested in what happens in their spheres of influence. while the united states has far more influence in venezuela than is acknowledged, it is nonetheless the case that, if you want to exchange ukraine for venezuela, that's a good deal from america's perspective. what trump is clearly misunderstanding is that, twenty years ago, the united states would hardly be making deals with the russians over regions in the western hemisphere, and that the idea of making a deal to assert control over a region in the western hemisphere is actually an abrogation of the doctrine, which says that any interference is an act of war. monroe is not about making deals with the europeans, it's about drawing a line in the sand and saying "you stay the fuck out". worse, when america was the hegemon, it could tell the russians to stay the fuck out of venezuela and start a war in ukraine, and there wouldn't be any discussion of deals made, because it was the hegemon and it didn't make deals, it made orders. a hegemon doesn't make deals or trade things, it makes demands and orders things. clinton would have never made a deal with the lowly russians or chinese; it would have been beneath america's standing as the hegemon. a request to make a deal with your enemies is a statement of weakness and in some ways a plea for mercy. strong powers don't make deals with their enemies. as such, the horsetrading actually represents a decline of american power, not an assertion of it, and i don't think trump understands that.
that aside, and i think i'm adding too much theory to trump's thought process but basically getting it right (he's not trying to enforce monroe, if he even knows monroe, he's just thinking in terms of spheres of influence, so that an analysis by mersheimer is probably more appropriate), the question of controlling shipping lanes is actually foundational to the developing world war with the chinese as america's primary enemy. this isn't a weird set of priorities at all; this is exactly what essentially all of the conflicts that exist right now are actually about.
during the obama administration, they talked about a "pivot" to china, which has evolved into the "quad" under biden and is essentially a chinese containment policy (in the literature, you're never allowed to call the chinese containment policy a chinese containment policy and that goes back decades. excruciating double think is normal in sino-american relations.). the chinese containment policy is largely about trying to use the indians to create a choke point in the malacca strait, which they've been resistant in doing. so, the united states has tried to sell nuclear subs to the australians to get them to do it instead, and has been pushing for japanese rearmament to spook the chinese into submission in the north. this is all about controlling this extremely strategic waterway in indonesia and malaysia.
there's currently an armed group at the bottom of the arabian peninsula that is shooting at western ships transiting back and forth through the suez canal. our media calls this group "houthi rebels" and claims they are an "iranian proxy", but they have access to hypersonic weapons, which belies that narrative. this appears to in truth be a chinese military base, and the chinese are in truth apparently trying to take control of the suez canal. the official chinese presence in the region is in africa in a small country carved out of ethiopia called djibouti, but they seem to be getting very advanced weapons to the rebels very easily, who are then using them to harass american shipping and lob missiles into israel. the chinese are apparently expecting to eventually take control of israel via an arab proxy, but they don't appear to have thought it through carefully, as that will never work. the point is that all of this mess isn't about gaza or palestine or syria or iran, it's about china taking control of the suez canal.
further, there's a reason that putin seized control of crimea first. ukraine is a relatively large and diverse country with a lot of assets, including large nuclear power plants and a substantive industrial heartland. what did putin prioritize first? the naval base in sevastopol, which is what the americans were trying to take control of. this ties into control of the dardanelles, which has been a major point of conflict since the end of the second world war (which lingered on in greece, as churchill and stalin fought a proxy war to try to control these shipping routes). russia's war aims have long included access to a warm water deep sea port, and the black sea remains the closest thing they've got, even as they're boxed in by the turks (and the greeks). ukraine is complicated, but frustrating russian shipping is a big component of what it has been about since 2014.
that's what a lot of the conflict currently going is actually about, controlling shipping lanes. let's remember that this is what the first two world wars were actually about as well - controlling shipping lanes, and access to resources in africa and southeast asia.
in context, the united states should be exerting control over the panama canal as that is a choke point that is within it's sphere of influence and the panamanians will just have to fucking deal with it. further, exerting control over the north atlantic (although, i think trump should be focusing more on iceland than greenland, as greenland as actually a little out of the way) is going to be extremely important in any developing conflict over shipping in the region. i mentioned previously that the united states invaded greenland and iceland in world war two. they also invaded newfoundland, and it was the american invasion of then british newfoundland that led to it becoming a part of canada. the british invaded norway, but they had to abandon it essentially immediately, and the germans had a huge occupation force in the country. conflict over control of norway was a major part of world war two that's largely not talked about, but it was one of the most important parts of the war. at the time, there were german uboats stalking the north atlantic, which might not be the concern today (there are russian nuclear subs sailing through the region, but they're not harassing trade. yet). in the long run, as the ice melts and a northwest passage opens up, whoever controls the north atlantic is going to control a huge amount of global trade. trump is right to try to get in before that happens.
does that mean trump is implicitly accepting the truth of climate change? well, nobody thinks trump actually believes that climate change is a chinese hoax, which is clearly absurd, although that is in some way a brilliant tactic to get out of having to answer questions about the topic at a republican fundraiser or primary debate. trump clearly believes that climate change is real, he just doesn't want to stop it. if elon musk can do one fucking useful thing shadowing trump, i'd like it to be to sit trump down and get a coherent fucking answer from him on climate change (in a closed door meeting, without having to be concerned about winning republican voters) and a dedication to a coherent fucking policy. what does trump imagine is going to happen to his florida hideout in ten-twenty years? did he see what happened to the region this year?
so, we'll have to see what trump actually does, but signalling a focus on shipping lanes indicates that he's actually thinking strategically. this isn't random, wacky shit. whomever is helping him do that should keep it up.
let me be as clear as i can: i am not a trump supporter. i have never endorsed trump. i endorsed clinton in 2016 (which was a rare event; i very rarely endorse democrats), and endorsed not voting or voting green or socialist in 2020 and 2024.
to begin with, i'm transgendered, but i'm not a right-winger, i'm an old timey by the book socialist that makes bernie sanders look moderate. old timey by the book socialists are completely outside of the political spectrum, and it actually causes me to take weird positions; i have at times aggressively argued that the soft-left liberal party is actually more "socialist" in a by-the-book way than the prairie populist ndp, which was initially a prairie gospel party and, as such, has always held a number of very not socialist policies. almost nobody cares about these technicalities and doesn't understand why i'm so anti-ndp and it consistently alienates me from a "modern left", which i continually disparage as "fake".
the problem with the democrats, and biden's been worse than anybody, is that they're so terrible that they can't even get a socialist transwoman to vote for them to block a candidate using large amounts of sophistry and demagoguery to scapegoat you, personally, to win votes. i don't expect he'll be able to do much substantive, but it's still unsettling to see the turn of events.
so, i'm certainly not a trump supporter. at all. but, as i'm aware of the terribleness of the alternative, i'm going to do what almost nobody anywhere else will do, which is analyze his policies fairly. i've been extremely critical of biden's foreign policy, but i've been as fair as i can, and i'm going to continue that with trump.
Tuesday, December 24, 2024
well, it's predictable. i'm not a christian, and i don't like public displays of religious symbols, but to have your country ransacked by a bunch of barbarians and then watch them burn down your symbols would be pretty difficult.
biden is likely unaware of the ethnic tapestry in syria, he just has a vague concept that they "believe in islam over there". there are no substantive religious minorities in afghanistan because everybody got killed by the mongols, leaving the majority muslim groups to build in a vacuum. as per my song, afghanistan has a history of buddhism, hinduism and other religions associated with persian and indian language groups, but they've all been wiped out for centuries.
syria, on the other hand, is very complicated, and to go in there and try and tell everybody they have to abide by sharia law now because we say so is really being a bull in a china shop.
however.
it's noticeable that there are christmas trees in syria. there probably were not christmas trees in syria before the end of the first world war, because it's a celtic-germanic-slavic pagan ritual. the slavs more so than the germans of central-eastern europe used to literally worship the trees before they were converted to christianity in a crusade. some indigenous american groups also treat trees as sacred objects. indigenous peoples seemed to have an awareness that trees are alive and saw them as occupying a different realm of existence, as though they represent a portal to the spirit world. sometimes, gods are said to live in trees, but that seems overly crude; the forests are sacred spaces because they're the transit points. it's a central part of slavic pagan religious history, but it has no analogue in ancient syrian christianity.
the french must have brought the christmas trees to syria.
either way, the syrian christians are pissed and i don't blame them.
under ghadaffi, libya was a secular society.
look how far they've fallen into dark age barbarism.
allowing large parts of the world to collapse into barbarism like this has effects for the rest of the world. it's not trivial.
"Libya is not a place for personal freedoms," Emad Al-Trabelsi, the interior minister of Libya's Tripoli-based, UN-backed Government of National Unity saidearlier this month, adding that "those seeking freedom should go to Europe."
when obama left office, this war was more or less over. some skirmishes had to be mopped up, but the jihadists had been thoroughly defeated. the west was triumphant.
when biden leaves office, the jihadists will be in control of three countries (afghanistan, syria, libya), which puts them in a stronger position than they've ever been in, and while i'm sure they made pinky swears to biden personally that they love america and will fight the russians for perpetuity, the shifting nature of barbarian alliances generates tremendous levels of instability and makes this outcome extremely dangerous. there is a new axis of evil developing out of those three terror states that's going to need to be eradicated.
that is biden's foreign policy legacy in the medium term: the return of islam not just as america's single greatest threat, but as a clear and present danger, and i hope the new administration realizes it and takes steps to neutralize it.
Monday, December 23, 2024
while americans are famous for their hypocrisy on human rights issues, we haven't seen this kind of openly deplorably abject hypocrisy in american foreign policy since poppy bush in the early 90s.
would you fight for this? would you fight to save this if you had to?
i would not. i would get out of the way and let it fall, and seek to start again, from first principles.
i wasn't sure at first when they disastrously pulled out of afghanistan using the same logic they're using in syria, but it's been a few years and we can summarize what biden has done. call it the biden doctrine.
1. in his infinite stupidity, biden has completely reversed the very smart changes to foreign policy that were brought in by obama. he's wiped it all out. obama never happened.
2. he has instead thoroughly, wholeheartedly reintroduced the carter-reagan policy of funding mujahideen groups backed by regressive forces in the arab world to fight the soviets. i'm not sure biden sees any difference between putin and khrushchev or xi and mao; he's not fighting putin, he's fighting khrushchev.
3. in eastern europe, they're funding nazi groups instead of islamist groups, but islamism and nazism are ideologically indiscernible from each other. this is why they had to put a jew in charge of ukraine in a rigged election. speaking of which...ukraine's a little overdue for one of those, huh? websites now talk about the "next ukrainian presidential election" in language that is identical to hamas' rule in gaza or fatah' rule in the west bank. ukraine wants into nato and the eu, but it can't have regular elections? no. ukraine should face deep international sanctions if it doesn't immediately have a free and fair election, and the europeans should be the ones pressuring them to do it.
4. this was the policy that created the forces on the ground that led to 9/11.
5. the filthy, disgusting animal they've put in charge in syria is in fact an al qaeda member.
6. the cliche is that the definition of insanity is doing the same things and expecting different outcomes, but that is not insanity. what it is is abject stupidity.
we're in the same place we were in in 1999ish, and i'd get ready for a very big attack in the next 5 years, as syria becomes a safe haven for terrorist groups to rebuild due to these al qaeda cells that the americans have stupidly placed directly in government, in the hopes that they'll fight the russians for them.
sadly, we will then need to go in and obliterate al qaeda in syria.
let me be clear about this, because the only country that seems to not be retarded right now is israel.
if the west continues to support these kinds of actors in the region, it's going to experience extreme blowback that it might not be able to stop.
i understand that biden lives in the 1950s and actually stupidly thinks that arabs want to live under sharia law, but they don't, and especially not in syria, and this is going to create a disaster that will need to be responded to in the medium term.
thankfully, the jews are cleaning up the mess the best they can, but this is not their responsibility and they can't be expected to take the lead on the issue.
i am shocked and baffled that the europeans want to actually send people back to live in a repressive theocracy, when they should be doing everything they can to get the vulnerable out before it's too late, but it really demonstrates how much of an orwellian lie the concept of human rights has become in the west.
it is increasingly the truth that the term "human rights" in the west means "the ability to enforce archaic and repressive laws from the middle east in geographic spaces overseen by western legal systems without any adherence to western (or modern, really) concepts of human rights".
to the disgusting animal that has recently taken control of syria,
don't ever consider trying to take a picture with me unless you clean your face off first. as it is, if we're ever in the same room, i'd expect you respect social distancing to keep that bacteria-filled toilet face of yours away from me.
thanks,
jessica
so, when trump tells other world leaders he doesn't care about their sphere, is that because he intends to flex the monroe doctrine?
i would prefer the good neighbour policy.
however, i actually agree that it's crazy that the united states doesn't have troops on the panama canal. i'm not suggesting they need to go in there and take this guy out like they did noriega, or that they should occupy the whole country, but they should absolutely have a clear presence protecting the canal itself, including a blockade on the north american side to keep migrants south of the canal. it's a choke point.
they could always nuke it and open up the lanes a little (yes i'm joking).
the united states has invaded greenland and iceland before and will do so again if it has to. it's really up to the islanders, not to denmark or norway. if i lived there, i might think about it.
the media narrative around the situation has been rather surreal. apparently, trudeau is a bad boyfriend for dumping her over zoom.
?
let's wake up for a second and remember that the cabinet serves at the pleasure of the prime minister who, in fact, has the parliamentary task of assigning people to the roles he thinks are best suited for them. granted, trudeau looks like a goof because carney bailed on him. however, freeland's response has been insolent, entitled, self-centered and undemocratic and her temper tantrum for not getting what she wants has simply made herself look unelectable, in my perspective.
she should have taken the role she was assigned, and i have absolutely no sympathy for her for getting demoted at all.
but, like i say, somebody has to lose this thing. let her do it.
if chrystia freeland really wants to be the one that loses this election, maybe the party ought to step aside and let her do it.
she thinks she's due for a "promotion", as though she works for a company called the government. she has zero connection with voters and zero ability to connect with voters. it's absurd.
somebody has to lose this election. if i was there, i wouldn't want to do it.
Saturday, December 21, 2024
Wednesday, December 18, 2024
are the americans considering invading canada?
we're bigger than they are.
it would serve no purpose and give the russians an excuse to invade canada at the same time. we don't want a canadian molotov-ribbentrop.
there's a section in their constitution about this. it's not crazy; they always intended to, but they never did.
what if they just invaded ontario, quebec, alberta and bc and said "fuck the rest, let 'em sleep with the meese"?
well, they'd better start patrolling the north, but i don't think canadians would tolerate it, and they'd have to deal with canadian militias forever.
it's a better idea to just try to be nice to us, which is why every president for decades has done that.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)