Working Tirelessly for a Ceasefire Deal

So we have a ceasefire deal. And it was Trump that made it happen. I mean - how long has he neem working tirelessly for a ceasefire deal? And then the Democrats lose the White House and pow - ceasefire deal. Also - as Biden so proudly notes - it's the same deal as from May 31. 229 days of stall and delay and genocide, all endorsed by Joe. For what? Blinken admitted yesterday that they assess that Hamas has recruited as many fighters as have been killed, so they didn't do shit to eliminate Hamas. Earlier on, I said that this all would have been for nothing - that Hamas was going to survive the onslaught, thereby annulling the primary reason for the violence. But I was young and naive - I did not believe that Biden's actual goal was to kill a lot of Arabs. How stupid of me - of course America's unstated goal was killing Arabs - it's as American as apple pie.

And that Trump is getting credit, that's actually what Biden wants. He did not contest that Trump made it happen. When pushed on it, he just said "are you kidding?" and then walked away. Why? Because he does not want to be tied to anything that results in less killing of Arabs. He thinks that being responsible for a ceasefire will make him a bad Zionist, which is what he fears most of all.

How else can we explain it? The fact is that Israel is the client state - it is entirely dependent on the US for its very existence. If the president wanted anything out of Israel, he can get it - Israel has no choice but to agree. There's that story of how Reagan ended an Israeli massacre of Muslims with a single phone call. Because that is the reality. POTUS has full control over Israel - it exists solely at the American president's discretion. If Israel wasn't such a fucking violent racist nation with a long history of just overwhelmingly bullshit war crimes - this would not be true. If it made any effort at reconciliation with the rest of the region and ended the occupation - it could continue on its own merits. But they won't - largely due to the fact that the US is more than happy to support their racist aggression.

What's Trump's motivation here? Who the hell knows! It's Trump - dude is "a very stable genius". He's erratic and irrational. If someone got a chance to pitch this idea to him and just out of random chance, it took - then that's the new policy. Maybe Trump was in a good mood when someone told him "if you force Bibi into a ceasefire, you'll look like a genius statesman and Biden will look like a useless wimp" - and that's all it took. Or maybe he got orders from MBS. Or maybe there's a secret side deal for more genocide after Trump is sworn in. Anything's possible with Trump.

So now - Democrats have a choice. Joe Biden's legacy will be genocide - his administration will be forever tied to these fifteen months of mass slaughter. And - if it truly is a ceasefire deal with international humanitarian agencies being given access to the killing fields - it's going to be current news for quite some time. So what are Democrats going to do? Will they break from their Islamophobic past - throwing Biden and the rest of the genocide enthusiasts under the bus? Imagine - putting the Clintons out to pasture, never to speak at a major Democratic event again. Or will they double down on "actually, genocide is good when you do it to Arabs"?

I'm not optimistic. It'll be progressives and minorities and special interests pitted against the old guard. And while the playing field is tilted against the old guard - I don't see them relinquishing power even if it does mean tying the party to racist bullshit and genocide.

Returning the World to a Sense of Normalcy

Here's another attempt at doing a post-mortem on the Harris campaign - an interesting exercise as us Canucks are due for a spring election and the Liberals seem dead set on running a candidate that will promise to be exactly the same as the one the public despises right now. Anyways, I came across an interesting tweet. It's a good argument - the expanding of Israel's fun-time bombing into Lebanon in October and the materializing reality of the dreaded "wider regional war" really highlighted Trump's argument about how the world was going to hell under Biden.

I think it was especially damaging to Harris because of their whole argument for getting elected in the first place. If you recall it went something like "wow, that Trump guy sure was a lot of nonsense. Wouldn't you like to return to a more normal world where America isn't the butt of jokes? Look, the Democrats are running the boring-est, most cookie cutter standard old white guy possible." Going back to normal - that was the actual value proposition. "Build Back Better" - a brilliant slogan of returning to the way things were before Trump fucked it over.

And in Joe's defense - he delivered on this, except on foreign policy. It wasn't just Trump that was causing instability, COVID messed the world up something fierce. And Biden did fix this. He was a great steward of the economy despite being given enormous issues to deal with. The rate of people dying to the mysterious disease dropped, and maybe Biden didn't do much to make this happen as this is the pathway for all pandemic diseases over time - the fact that he treated COVID like a real threat was a breath of fresh not-contaminated air. Deferring to experts instead of promoting horse paste and injecting bleach is exactly the type of thing Joe promised in the 2020 campaign. 

Now to be clear - he did not fix everything (other than foreign policy), The housing crisis got worse. A lot worse. That probably hurt the Democrats chances. Also, he did basically nothing on criminal justice reform - but that probably didn't hurt them much as this was more of a return to the way things were - an embracing of the good old days when police brutality was something you only pretended to disapprove of. And wildly - that worked. The anger and outrage in the summer of George Floyd just quieted down as people continued ignoring how racist and garbage our police forces have become. A return to normalcy.

And also - Joe very rarely featured in the monologues of late night talk shows. The president wasn't the butt of jokes all day, every day. Just occasionally, as it was in the olden pre-Trump days. One part of this was that Trump lied all the time. Just big fat whoppers every time he opened his YUGE yapper. Trump is the reason so many people now know who Daniel Dale is - his existence elevated "fact checking" to a lofty position in the discourse. Even harmless shit like pretending that "covfefe" actually meant something, to crazy nonsense like making up a brand new hurricane track forecast with a Sharpie just to avoid acknowledging that forecasts sometimes change.

Let's acknowledge the truth here - Joe was never a strong candidate. Even four years ago before his age really started catching up to him. He was never charismatic and he did not project an image of leadership. He is a self-acknowledged "gaffe machine" that also says stupid shit all the time. His main selling point as a politician is that he is likable - and also, that he is not Donald Trump.

And then October 7th happened and Joe's Israel-Palestine policy flushed the whole thing down the crapper. The Biden administration just kept feeding tens of thousands of tons of bombs into the suffering factory being run by the most fascist far-right government Israel has ever known. A coalition that literally includes someone convicted for terrorism as the Minister of National Security. 

Sure, the pre-Trump world had a lot of violence in it. Obama was the king of drone warfare and the use of high tech death machines to unalive brown people was a feature in the way things used to be. But Gaza is different. Even people who acknowledge that it is genocide keep downplaying how fucking horrific the situation in Gaza is. How incredibly sick and twisted the IDF has been and how we are all seeing it play out in real time.

And as noted - an October surprise of the expanding Middle East war, with the threat of Iran getting actively drawn in and the possibly US boots on the ground with the flag draped coffins that implies - that probably did not help the Harris campaign in the least bit. It completely undermined the entire foundation of the campaign - that they were not Trump. Chaos in the Middle East had started to grow under Biden and threatened to force the US into sending in the troops. And the Biden administration was coming out regularly and telling Trump-sized lies in order to defend it all. The campaign was basically saying "but Trump will lie to your face with zero sense of shame - and also Israel is doing way more than required in order to protect civilians."

The entirety of the appeal of Democrats was to be the steady hand on the tiller and just keeping things calm and normal - to being not-Donald-Trump. Their slogan might well have been Orange Man Bad. And then they just fully embraced bombing hospitals and sniping children. They looked at the horrific images and videos coming out of Gaza and going viral across the world and said "we're paying for that." Thousands of videos of IDF soldiers playing with children's toys and women's lingerie in the burnt out husks of houses was explained by the State Department repeatedly insisting that Israel is minimizing civilian suffering.

Trudeau Replacement Update

Here's an update on the names being bandied around to take over for Trudeau to lead the Liberals into the inevitable spring election.

FRONT RUNNERS

Mark Carney, never previously run for office, former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. Rumour is that he is going to announce his candidacy next week. He is the favourite because he is the absolute most establishment candidate that can be imagined. And what is more centre-left moderate than picking the most establishment candidate possible at a time of extreme anti-establishment anger.

Chrystia Freeland, the trigger for Trudeau's resignation - former Deputy Minister and former Minister of Finance. She's a pretty good pick too - as she would represent a complete and total continuation of Trudeau, and what would be more centre-left than picking a candidate that most represents continuity with a deeply unpopular incumbent. I guess she's hoping that her shivving of Trudeau when he tried to demote her might give her enough space to be viable - but that's crazy naive.

NOT RUNNING

Dominic LeBlanc, the current Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs who also picked up Freeland's jobs as Deputy PM and Minister of Finance. Not running.

Melanie Joly, our Minister of Foreign Affairs  - with an increased profile with all the foreign affairs going on. Not running.

Anita Anand, former Minister of Defense and current Minister of Transport - not running.

LONGSHOTS

Christy Clark, former premier of BC - who resigned in 2017. Her party, the BC Liberals, was left so screwed over by her term that they no longer exist as a party, but solely as a target for irregular fundraising practices. That party rebranded for the latest election this past year knowing that the brand was toxic. They still failed to win a seat and in fact went on to endorse Conservative candidates they were notionally running against. Still, that all happened after she retired from politics eight years ago. This will be an uphill slog if she decides to run, a decision she will be making this coming week.

Karina Gould, the Liberal House Leader.  The youngest person in contention at the age of 37. Says she is considering a run. As House Leader, she's spent the past year defending Trudeau's stubborn refusal to resign, which isn't going to help her at all.

May The Market Forces Be With You

Back in May, a YouTuber posted a four hour long video dissecting what went wrong with Disney's Star Wars hotel. A four hour long YouTube of Jenny Nicholson just talking about the problems of a failed theme-hotel experience project. It has 11 million views.

The Star Wars hotel served 71,000 guests.

Now sure, it's not a fair comparison - a Star Wars hotel cost thousands of dollars for a two night stay. That was one of the criticisms - even at Disney-level premiums, this experience was a huge rip-off, whereas watching a YouTube video only costs whatever time you are willing to spend watching it. And also, the hotel can only accommodate 370 people at a time, whereas any number of people can click on a link.

But I think it is still informative. The idea of a deeply immersive ultra-premium experience set in the Star Wars universe seems like a no-brainer. There has got to be demand for this sort of thing - to engage in getting as close to actually being in Star Wars as reasonably possible. It is one of the biggest and most iconic franchises in the world and has a very large and very devoted fan base.

But it is less than niche when compared to the thing that Jenny Nicholson gets around to talking about. And that is the garbage that capitalism and the equity fund/MBA approach to delivering services is inflicting on us. The 2023 Word of the Year from the American Dialect Association was that wonderful term coined by Cory Doctorow - "enshittification".

We're all mad as hell about enshittification. The gradual monetization of things we've taken for granted - all of the service fees for stuff that should just be included. In Galactic Starcruiser's case - there was added insult in that charging more for all of the "optional extras" still resulted in a blistering base price. Nicholson nails this buy noting that having extra charge add-ons for an already very expensive premium experience just undercuts the thing at its heart. Your extra special super expensive vacation has stuff you are going to miss out on. The money guys probably thought of this as a feature as it would naturally push the upsell by itself instead of just undermining the whole experience completely.

But we're stuck in this weird Catch-22. Discourse about enshittification is always going to be niche and marginal despite their being massive demand for it. Because that message will not have access to platforms where the business model is enshittification. If we want to stop enshittification, we need a non-enshittified platform to talk about it but we won't get that platform until we talk about it.

Which sadly gets us to the point where everyone knows what's wrong - we all know what enshittification looks like - but nothing gets done about it and it all gets normalized. That's just the way it is. Some things will never change? Don't you believe it - it's going to just get worse.

The LA Fires have nothing to do with Climate Change

There's a lot of stuff about the fires that enrages me - but I'm just going to focus on some of the pettier items.

It's not climate change - it's just tweakers and the homeless setting off fires.

As if tweakers and homeless people in LA is a brand new phenomenon that only started in 2025.

This fucking ludicrous nonsense doesn't even answer the question - why are these fires so bad right now? Why do we have crazy wildfires starting the end of the first week of January? "Oh it's homeless tweakers." Really? Does not make a lick of sense.

Does anyone remember Smokey the Bear? About preventing forest fires? Remember what the evil culprit of forest fires was? Discarded cigarettes. Tobacco use among adults in California has dropped from over 15% in 2001 to 6.2% twenty years later. Even if somehow homeless tweakers were a fire hazard, this does not make up for the three and a half million fewer smokers. FFS.

OTOH, here's a look at 2024 rainfall versus normals:

The fact that it has not rained in LA since May might have something to do with the fires. And these extreme weather patterns - of longer drought periods followed by more extreme heavy rainfall - exactly what the climate change people have been saying is coming since forever.

Greater Los Angeles has a population of over 18 million. The solution is not expecting that none of these people are ever going to cause fires, intentionally or unintentionally. Lightning still happens. Fires are going to happen - they always have. The issue isn't the starting of the fire, it's the fuel conditions around the fire.

It's like - storing multiple open drums of gasoline in your house and then blaming the loss of the building on static electricity or somesuch. 

Are We The Baddies?

Here's another way of looking at the Gaza genocide. There are two nations that are firmly and fully supporting of the ongoing massacres - Israel and the US. Both becoming increasingly isolated on the world stage.

The current prime minster of Israel has an active international warrant out for his arrest for committing war crimes. Also, he is being tried domestically for multiple cases of corruption.

The incoming president of the United States of America was just sentenced for his felony convictions for cheating the electoral system.

The leaders of these nations are criminals - and that's by the assessment of those nations themselves. 

The Best Commentary on International Law is on Twitch.tv

Not even joking. Alonso Gurmendi does weekly 2 hour streams where he talks about international law and then Chat forces him to play FIFA. It's wild - he's getting questions about colonialism and the predicates for statehood and answering them in real time. And his answers are all really good.

Here's the link.

If you'd like some "try before you buy" snippets (his Twitch streams are free) - there's a bunch of stuff editted out of the streams on his YouTube channel.