{"id":9751,"date":"2026-03-01T00:05:36","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T07:05:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/?p=9751"},"modified":"2026-02-28T19:40:53","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T02:40:53","slug":"the-peace-candidate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/2026\/03\/01\/the-peace-candidate\/","title":{"rendered":"The Peace Candidate"},"content":{"rendered":"

“We reject the unilateral military action by the United States and Israel, which represents an escalation and contributes to a more uncertain and hostile international order … We demand immediate de-escalation and full respect for international law. It is time to resume dialogue and achieve a lasting political solution for the region.”<\/p>\n

–Spanish Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah. Me too, bro. <\/p>\n

The rest of Europe issued mealy-mouthed bullshit statements about having “concerns” and of course failed to mention Israel the way our good Pedro did. <\/p>\n

So a bucket of piss for all their noble heads. <\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The butcher’s bill in the first twelve hours:<\/p>\n

The Israeli-U.S. airstrikes on Iran under Operation Epic Fury have resulted in 201 reported deaths, with at least 85 of those being civilians. Additionally, around 747 people have been injured.<\/p>\n

The strikes have affected numerous locations across 24 out of Iran\u2019s 31 provinces, with one particularly devastating incident involving an airstrike on a girls’ primary school, which contributed to the civilian casualties.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Blowing up little girls. Making the world safe for democracy. Same thing, right? <\/p>\n

These are our tax dollars at work. This is business as usual, for the Empire. <\/p>\n

More<\/a>.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Late in the day it was reported that Iran’s leader was killed. Doubtless no accident. <\/p>\n

Doubtless also that some people very ‘close’ to me will find that cause for celebration. <\/p>\n

Which got me thinking about a subject that’s come up a lot in the last few years.<\/p>\n

Who qualifies as “family”?<\/p>\n

I have a theory. <\/p>\n

The first line in that song goes:<\/p>\n

I am still living with your ghost. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Anyone that is true of … that’s your family. <\/p>\n

So there are people I’m closely related to that don’t haunt me. <\/p>\n

And there are people completely unrelated to me whose ghosts I still live with …<\/p>\n

… and I believe the latter qualify as a kind of family while the former do not. <\/p>\n

Time doesn’t matter, and neither does whether these people are alive or dead. <\/p>\n

I still live with the ghost of a girl that broke my heart half a liftetime ago.<\/p>\n

I do not live with the ghost of my ex-wife. <\/p>\n

I haven’t thought about this theory for very long. <\/p>\n

Thought might change things.<\/p>\n

Right now it feels real. <\/p>\n

So let’s run with that. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“We reject the unilateral military action by the United States and Israel, which represents an escalation and contributes to a more uncertain and hostile international order … We demand immediate de-escalation and full respect for international law. It is time to resume dialogue and achieve a lasting political solution for the region.” –Spanish Prime Minister […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9751"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9756,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9751\/revisions\/9756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}