Day: February 16, 2015

ISIL aka Daesh

Currently ISIL, in the Caliphate illegally and heinously established in Iraq, is killing proportionately  many times more Muslims than Christians.  The offshoot of ISIL in Libya is more likely to be settling old political scores and grinding the faces of secular Muslim countries, since in the Caliphate the ISIL goons are extorting a tax rather than beheading Christians – for the most part.  Christians living in slavery in the Caliphate is cool; suffering Muslim apostates to live is not.  I note with interest that Egypt, never exactly Mr. Upstanding in protecting minority Copt rights, responded with airstrikes.

Given that ISIL’s end game is to be the prime mover in the bringing forward of Judgement Day, in glorious battle with the forces of Rome on the plains of Iraq, I hope the secular Muslim countries and NATO strap their collective wills together and squash these lunatics, with a nice leisurely war crimes trial for the survivors afterwards.
Also, and not to put to fine a point on it, without air support ISIL cannot long prosper.  Best case scenario the Saudis roll their eyes, take out the Caliph using local intelligence, and go back to messing with oil prices in hopes of removing enough production from the global market to stabilize their market share.  The Wahhabis and the propaganda arm of Al-Qaida hate ISIL, one for being branded apostate and one for being told they’re not being diligent enough in meeting their political ends (no Caliph, no territory, no ground troops, no hall pass with Allah).
Without multi-state sponsored military intervention, it’s likely to play out as:
ISIL expands territory and operations much farther and faster than anybody wants or will give them credit for.
Inability to provide the necessities of life due to mismanagement, sanctions and constant warfare will anger the local populations so that ISIL spends as much time, blood and treasure putting down rebellions as expanding the Caliphate (which it feels obliged by Allah to do).
Various ethnic and religious groups fight into this mess (with much handwringing and vapidity on the part of the Western military and press) and a longish multiparty 5-10 year civil war ensues.  Sometime in there the Caliph goes to heaven in wee little bits.
ISIL wannabes in the West keep shooting up synagogues and malls, triggering revenge killings of Sikhs minding their own business pumping gas or shopping at Walmart, arsons at mosques and calls to ‘ship the bastards all home’ – which pains me, since I really like most the Ahmadis and Ismailis I’ve met, even if they are the worst apostates EVAR.
An uneasy peace mostly due to exhaustion, climate change (water is a huge issue for the region) and wackiness in the oil market ensues after the civil war.
A new Qurayshi Caliph is secretly unveiled to the faithful, and publicly revealed some months or years later.
Rinse, repeat.
Yeah, I’m a cynic.

anecdotal trigger

Ah, me.  The decluttering group I belong to on facebook posted the 40 bags in 40 days challenge.  That made me think.

Time was, I lived in Amedeo Garden Court (5 different apartments over almost ten years) in Toronto.  When I was living in the northwesternmost building, my downstairs neighbour, who was our childcare provider at the time, reported a most amazing story.

It started with a dispute between the landlord and her across the hall neighbour. Other tenants reported that this woman, a slender, sad looking person in her 40s, had an apartment that was full of garbage (when the door was open, you could see a human wide path through a debris field of pizza boxes and trash).  It smelled, it was attracting pests.  The landlord lowered the boom and told the woman to clean or move.

She hired two little Portuguese guys (in those days in Toronto every cleaner was Portuguese – I bet that racial balance has shifted dramatically) to clean. I’m sure their hearts sank when they saw the scale of it.

Well, in one day they hauled out forty large trash bags, forty empty 40oz liquor bottles, and disturbed a veritable army of mice and cockroaches.  You couldn’t get close to the garbage bin; it was surrounded by the most noisome collection of trashbags shy of a garbage strike. The woman came home from work (and we’re talking about a hot day and no air conditioning) and berated them for ‘not finishing’!

My downstairs neighbour’s husband spoke Portuguese, and he said he heard combinations of curse words he’d never heard before, as he eavesdropped from across the hall.  They demanded their money, told her in English that they’d see her in hell before they came back and did a stitch more of work for her… and then the troubles began.

We took five mice out of the apartment over the next week (I caught two with my bare hands, we trapped one, and Bounce got two), and I’ve never, ever seen that many cockroaches outside of films from the tropics. It was months before we got the influx of roaches down to a dull roar.  Hoarding isn’t about moral panic, it’s a health hazard. Also, alcoholism.  My neighbour was amazed this woman would arise from her trashpile everyday and go to work.  I bet her clothing stank, even when it had been laundered.  You can be really really sick and hold down a job.

I may have forty bags  to declutter and take out (actually, I doubt it), but I think apart from spiders and silverfish it’s all good, and it won’t smell.  After all these years, I don’t keep food in my room….

Sore

I was in pain for most of yesterday and I had a brief and unsatisfactory night of it.  The CPAP came off quite early as I recollect.  Every time I roll over in bed I can hear the damned pelvic bones go crunch, crunch.  It doesn’t hurt – strangely, but by jingo it’s weird and freaky.

Unfortunately my plans to go to Victoria are being impacted by how hard it is to walk.  Just before bed last night I imagined the walk (now about half a k longer at the Victoria end and already unconscionably long at the Vancouver end) at the ferry terminal and I actually cried.  I don’t think I can do it.

So I think what I will do is try to locate a brace (it’s actually a maternity girdle, if you can believe it) or jerry-rig something at this end and see if it helps and THEN go.

Hurts to stand, hurts to sit, hurts to walk.  Off to youtube for physio exercises for my problem, as it occurs there should be help there.  Huzzah, there are!  God bless the midwives.