Toronto police’s advice to car owners is to leave your keys at the front door so that thieves who kick in your door to steal your car, they’ll take what they want and leave.  As you can imagine that’s caused quite an uproar and this author sums things up pretty well I thought.

The message from the Toronto Police Service couldn’t be clearer: we surrender, and you, the peace-loving, law-abiding citizens, should surrender, too.

For your own safety.

Regular Line readers will know — hell, anyone who pays any attention at all to the news will know — that auto thefts have been surging in this country, relative to recent years (yes, yes, I know — they haven’t yet gone past historic levels). It’s particularly bad right now in my hometown. The issue has finally percolated up into the public consciousness enough that it’s become a political issue. We’re getting new task forces and all that jazz — the kinds of things politicians announce when they realize, always belatedly, that they have to announce something. But while those announcements are made and repeated and recycled, thus giving the politicians their coveted ass-covering material, the thefts are continuing.

And the Toronto Police have reflected on the problem. They’ve mulled it over. Thought long and hard. And they’re advising people just give up. To stay safe.

Source: The Line

One of my pet peeves is when politicians or authorities tell me what to do to stay “safe” and the author makes a good point about what we are experiencing now is not the norm but rather the exception.  War, violence, stealing, murder and death is the norm something our society was able to shift away from but if the law and justice does not maintain the faith with the people, it’s very easy for society to break down.  As the author says too, heaven forbid someone protect themself or their property then the cops will definitely arrest the victim and charge them with whatever they can.

What’s the point of having a police force and justice system if they won’t do their jobs and why are the rights of criminals greater than the rights of their victims?

Aliens don’t visit us because they see that we fight over the stupidest things…  In the latest episode of those stupid humans according to US intelligence (and I hate to quote them) Russia is developing nuclear space weapons to destroy satellites.

The weapon is still under development and is not yet in orbit, Biden administration officials have emphasized publicly. But if used, officials say, it would cross a dangerous rubicon in the history of nuclear weapons and could cause extreme disruptions to everyday life in ways that are difficult to predict.

This kind of new weapon — known generally by military space experts as a nuclear EMP — would create a pulse of electromagnetic energy and a flood of highly charged particles that would tear through space to disrupt other satellites winging around Earth.

Source: CNN

EMPs are not new, we’ve known about them since the 60s and what this story is conveniently ignoring is that if an EMP is detonated in space yes it’ll cause problems for satellites but the blast portion that hits the planet could destroy the electrical grid on the ground too.  Funny enough a lot of satellites are relatively hardened against EM radiation, since they’re in space and have to deal with the sun and cosmic rays but if an EMP’s energy hits the ground, we’re pretty much screwed.

And it being in space means we’d have like no warning too, at least with a missile the militaries can track its movements (though whether the government would inform the people, I highly doubt) but with space based weapons maybe a mere few minutes.  This is a first strike capability and if something like this gets into orbit, you can bet the militarization of space will happen.

Police departments should not have this type of sting power and everyone should be outraged.

Homicide officers said the DNA was obtained at a 2018 Kurdish New Year celebration in Burnaby, B.C., where police handed out free tea samples in numbered cups that were later swabbed, in a sting that identified a brother of the suspect.

Source: CBC

Yes the crime was horrible however the authorities should not be able to get random people’s DNA to test against.  Civil liberties must be held to the highest standard and if it starts to erode, we quickly slide into police state for the sake of the “greater good”.

This was a heart breaking video shot & narrated by some AP journalists about the opening days of the Ukraine/Russian conflict in Mariupol.

Be warned, there are lots of graphic images & videos of dead people (kids, families, etc) and the only thing I could think was that our political leaders on the world stage all act like god damn school children arguing & fighting in the yard.  What will all this death and destruction achieve, was it really worth it for Russia to gain a bit more territory or for the Ukraine’s “allies” to feed Ukrainians into the meatgrinder?  Another thought I had while watching was that I hate how media & games glorify war, it’s not fun it’s terrifying and horrible.  I’m guilty of enjoying violent videogames, I enjoy shooting guns and hell I played airsoft but I never deluded myself to think I’d be actually good in a real war; I’m certain it’ll be a nightmare.

We should throw out any politician that talks up war or considers it an option, only dialog can help sooth our differences and make things better.

The Thanksgiving long weekend was relaxing but that’s overshadowed by world events.  Looking at the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, I understand that what Israel is doing with Gaza is wrong and that the roots of this go back many decades but what was the point of Hamas attacking Israel?  They didn’t think they could actually hold territory right, was this all just to hit back hard for once?  Didn’t anyone have enough foresight to realize Israel will retaliate and when they do, it’s the people of Gaza who will suffer?

I always side with the oppressed and thought the BDS movement was the only way to cause enough pain for Israel to give Palestinians their own home but this was just stupid.  Attacking military or governmental entities is one thing, attacking innocent civilians (sometimes brutally) does their cause a great disservice and only hardens resolve.  You can’t kill or fight your way out of this (for either side), there needs to be political will and right now everyone is acting like a bunch of school children.

Netanyahu’s grip on power was tenuous but now it’s as solid as ever, the world needs that asshole to leave before we can move forward and the weekend attack by Hamas has only set back that timeline and their cause.

As I watch the war footage coming out of Ukraine it makes me so sad to see, what exactly are the front line fighters fighting for?  It looks absolutely horrible and to at least the Russian soldiers do they even care about why they’re there?  I wish we had a system where if a leader wanted to start a war of aggression, that they’d have to lead from the front or at least their family members there too, then we’ll see how many of these conflicts are necessary…

There have been so many needless deaths for idiotic reasons.  With that said while Russia is wrong by being the aggressor here, I also do believe it was provoked into this action by the West & NATO.  I also hope that Ukrainians realize that the US will fight Russia till the last Ukrainian, their goals and the US’ is not the same.

No wonder aliens don’t visit us, we fight each other viciously over the most idiotic reasons. We’re not nearly intelligent or civilized enough to deserve recognition.

So I’ve blogged a lot less recently and I’m not sure if I’ve spoken about the conflict in Ukraine yet but man as an outside observer it feels like all politicians want WW3.  Why are we governed by people who act like school yard children on the world stage?  Sure Russia is the belligerent however this immediate invasion and conflict did not start last year but has its roots going back much farther.  Watching Western media cheer weapons deliveries and escalation as good things boggles my mind, neither side Russia or NATO (Ukraine is being used as a pawn unfortunately) want peace and at every opportunity either side has only turned up the heat further.

There are no negotiations going on because the logic of thought from both sides are the same.  One wants to negotiate from a position of strength but if you’re in a position of strength continue the fight.  Start to lose and propose talks but don’t want to negotiate while weak so must fight more to get into a better position and around it goes.

I don’t know what the answer is to this conflict, I think the West should acknowledge Russia’s security fears and recognize that it lied to then Russian leaders saying NATO would not expand one inch East after the fall of the Soviet Union and that it had a hand in the 2014 coup in Ukraine, that’d probably help.  Finally give Russia a way out, yeah they were stupid to start this war but if you push Putin into a corner without any options then well we’ll see the actions of a very desperate person…

If only leaders had to fight from the front instead of sending conscripts to die for idiotic political reasons…