i don't want cap & trade or a carbon tax.

i want direct state investment via an infrastructure bank as a subsidiary of the bank of canada.

i want a manhatten project for the climate.

i'm just sitting at a desk, drinking a coffee and typing - like 90% of the adult population is.

listen.

i've been clear that my drug of choice is caffeine, and i take it in small doses.

coffee.

that's it.

why am i funny? why am i productive?

it's just coffee, and a decent work ethic.

that's all.

i mean, honestly.

why is this sex symbol surrounding himself with virgins, and asking them for advice on how to appeal to young people?

"trudeau has lost in a landslide, but he's strangely managed to do remarkably well with the virgin vote...."

the ndp are hopeless.

but, trudeau really needs to dump his super-cool millennial strategists.

they're a bunch of losers.

i mean, if you're taking the cues from the strategists seriously, they think we want to vote for apple-using, pot-smoking hipsters.

that are entrepreneurs.

and muslims.

talk about a race to the bottom.

i'm going to say this clearly.

if trudeau & singh end up in a hipster war, scheer will win in a landslide.

this is an example of bubble-thinking. political strategists don't get out much, and when they do, they don't talk to real people.

the reality is that hipsters are below apple users in the hierarchy of uncoolness.

but, here's an unexpected twist.

i suspect jagmeet singh may do unexpectedly well with gay men.

they like beards.

i understand that there is a certain type of woman that is going to be attracted to jagmeet singh.

but, you have to understand that the vast majority of women are going to find him to be absolutely disgusting looking.

it's not the headgear. it's not the skin colour. it's not even the aroma, that you can no doubt smell through the screen.

it's the beard.

it's gross.

would you show up for a job interview looking like this?

how about this?

i'm a 6.66.

and, hitch would at least give himself an epsilon.

7.0 is just another type of fundamentalism, and hitch wasn't that, not even in his psychotic later years.

http://bigthink.com/think-tank/atheism-easter-atheister

this idea of talking about what people in the past thought about god is deeply flawed.

would you ask aristotle what he thought about relativity? then why ask him what he thinks about god? it's just as foolish.

why would we think newton's theology is less flawed than his physics? and, that is ignoring the threat of harm he was under for deviating from orthodoxy.

we need to look at the evidence that exists today, not the arguments that existed in the past, before much of that evidence was available.

i would rather ask the question of what past thinkers might think if presented with the evidence we have today than ask the question of what they thought given the evidence available to them. while this can only be speculative, it's far more useful.

atheism is going to win in the end.

it would probably win right now, if the issue were forced.

the moment it is forced? watch out.

this is a sleeping elephant, waiting to be stirred.

listen: i'm the one that wants this done as humanely as possible, but it's going to be done. we have to secularize the laws further, not continue to work in these loopholes for ideas that are being left in the trash heap.

religious plurality is not progress. progress is the discarding of religion as an anachronism. and, the progress inherent in the atheist and humanist movements is not going to be held back by some burkean conservatives masquerading as liberals.

do not fall for these "progressives". they are trojan horses for stagnation, or backwardness.

so, i say this to the liberal political class: go ahead and choose plurality over atheism, in a situation where they are in direct conflict. see how that works out for you.

i dare you.

leave that for the conservatives. as, that will be their role, in the end.

also, bach was more of a mathematician than a composer.

and, while i can appreciate his work as a mathematician - as well as a classical guitarist - i do find that he gets prodding rather quickly, as the lack of emotional investment quickly reduces the artistic value of the work.

so, it is perhaps worth pointing out that so much of his work was commissioned - that is, purchased for a sum - rather than produced for purely artistic motives. it's rather obvious.

that said, the novelty saves it from the kind of artistic death one hears in a rossini or a mozart. bach may have been working for profit, but he was exploring a new system of tonality, and so there is this playful dimension to much of it. but, this is the appreciation of a mathematician, and not of an artist.

i would give him a fields medal before i gave him a grammy.

and, john williams was better at guitar than at film music, too.

or think of it like this: atheism is more popular in ontario than the ndp is.

how did we get to the point where atheism outperforms socialism?

could we become the majority by 2030?

there's still way more of us than there are muslims, even if muslims have a faster growth rate. in canada, islam is atheism's greatest threat - clearly. but it's going to be a while before we have to act on it.

https://www.crop.ca/en/blog/2017/169/

i didn't put 'em on the boat.

don't look at me.

but, the fact that they're here isn't going to alter my visions for the future of society. it's just another obstacle to overcome: another group to fight, another special interest to defeat.

listen.

why did tommy douglas do?

why is he famous?

why does the ndp even exist?

he took on the doctors. and, he won.

so, asking the ndp to fight the doctors on a point of providing access - in this case in helping open the way for the coming secularization of society, as atheism becomes the dominant religion in canada - is absolutely in the party's tradition.

the ndp took a hard swing to the right in the last election and got nailed for it.

it's the same party. same leader. but, they're falling back to their traditional messaging, which is about education & healthcare.

trust issues aside, i've spent a lot of time at the hospital over the last few years, and i don't have much to complain about regarding things like wait times. and i don't exactly live in a booming economy, either.

the only problems i've had with the system over the last few years are around the question of access. i've had some problems with doctors - both christians and muslims - that feel that they have some right to enforce their religious views on their patients. if i were to make tweaks to the system, it would be to ensure that there are stronger rules put in place to ensure that doctors are prevented from denying access, based on their religious beliefs.

the issues i've had have been around my gender identity. but, this is also an issue for people seeking assisted suicide (or, i guess, for their remaining family members), for women seeking abortion and for other medical services that ontarians ought to have total, open access to - but may be seen negatively through various religious filters.

i would like to see doctors told very clearly that if they are going to deny services then they are going to have their licenses revoked.

more money is always good, don't get me wrong. but, the liberals themselves campaigned on this many years ago, and i'm not, personally, feeling like there's a lot of work necessary to do, here.

the ndp will, of course, make it seem like we're facing a crisis. that's good politics. i just don't think it's true...

http://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/ontario-ndp-leader-horwath-commits-dedicated-mental-health-and-addition-ministry

i don't really have a problem with this, so long as the library actually gets moved - although i might suggest prioritizing new housing over more mission space. my main concern would be that we need somewhere to store local records.

one good idea would be to put the new library in the wave pool building.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/library-branch-sold-downtown-mission-1.4559616

in all seriousness, what happened in alberta is that the conservatives split their own vote. the ndp didn't really win the election, so much as the conservatives shot themselves in the foot.

the dynamics for this just aren't present in ontario at all.

see, i'm hoping that ontarians are able to see rachel notley for the disaster that she is and not make the same mistake.

i mean, we're smarter than albertans...

....right?

http://www.rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2018/03/andrea-horwath-will-be-ontarios-next-premier-remember-where-you

the election here could end up the other way, you know.

the ndp could get off to a fast start, forcing liberal voters to make the choice that ndp voters usually have to make. and, ford is going to be harder to vote for than harper for most liberals in the gta.

but, horwath has spent her career campaigning in the middle, and she's going to be a very hard sell. on top of that, as soon as she gets the spotlight on her, she's no doubt going to pull a mulcair - or have to deal with muckracking liberals convincingly painting her as the neo-conservative that she truthfully really actually is. even if she does get off to a good start, that doesn't mean she can hold it.

like every other conservative at ever other level in this country, ford has to split the vote somehow.

also: they said women hated trump, and they probably did. but, in the end, trump actually won white women, who appear to have been whipped by their husbands. numerically speaking, they decided the election (although i'm convinced that it was actually decided by voter suppression laws). let us hope that if anything is different in canada, it's that this doesn't happen here.

i'm a morning person. well, so long as i don't have to be anywhere, in the morning, anyways; i guess i'm more of a night owl, but i am usually awake when the sun comes up, and rather enjoy it when it does appear.

i want my hour of sunlight in the morning back :(.

i mean, if there's ever been an argument for anarchism, it's this. i didn't vote to make the sun come up an hour later. nor is there any good reason for this. this is just purely arbitrary. how did we end up with an institution that thinks it has enough power to decide when the sun should come up?

i was up a little later tonight, and am now done eating and ready to start the day.

i haven't smelled any drugs wafting up here yet tonight, so hopefully the adjustments i made yesterday afternoon are good enough to allow me to focus for the day. i've also left the cabinets open. so long as it's cold out, the cold air flowing down should both clear out the passageways a little bit and keep any smoke down there from rising up.

there are other explanations, but let's hope i've got a handle on this.

so, is occidentalism a thing?

sure.

i mean, what else would you call the ridiculous idea that white people are at the root of all evil in the world, the cause of all suffering and the origination of all injustice?

i think said's point was basically correct, but he's maybe making too much of it.

you still see this kind of thing. canada's sitting prime minister, justin trudeau, took a recent trip to india and what followed was an example of orientalism taken to it's most ridiculous extremes. everybody involved - the prime minister, his wife and his advisors - appear to have been living in the same fantasy reality, with this. his father was actually quite keenly aware of this sort of nonsense and would have barfed if he were alive to see this (although he would have never allowed it to happen, either).

but, i also have a sneaking suspicion that the root cause of this was that a young justin found some kipling on a book shelf somewhere, and never fully undid it's effects.

and, i think that this is really all that said is truly pointing out - that western perspectives of the east remain startlingly out of date. it's less that those stereotypes are completely wrong and more that they're anachronistic, and little attempt was made by western intellectuals to stay up to date on changes happening in other parts of the world.

one could imagine that a barbary pirate making a stop on the coast of new england in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries may have had some colourful stories to bring back to north africa about the new england puritans. reading those stories today wouldn't be wrong, exactly. but, it would certainly be wrong to apply that concept of puritan protestantism to modern boston. i mean, the irish hadn't even shown up, yet.

one can only imagine how the ancient inhabitants of providence would react to lightning bolt.

so, i mean, it's a valid point, and everything. but, it's maybe overblown.

and, the less a muslim sees themselves as colonized, the more powerful the colonization is, right?

this is the said-turing thesis.

so, it's true that the iranians - for example - are not arabs, but they have been arabized through the process of islamification.

there was a time when there were more arabs in iran (by percentage of the population) than there are today, too.

so, iran would be a good example of a culture where decolonization means dearabization, which is the same thing as demuslimification, or deislamicization.

if you're not following, it's because you're confusing colonialism with westernization, and what you're really calling for is dewesternization, not decolonization. and, you can think whatever the fuck you want. you can go live in the forest, if you can find one, for all i care. i just want you to be honest and concise about it, so i can demonstrate that you're wrong, properly.

i mean, it's the most frustrating fucking thing in the world to get into a debate with somebody that can't even define what they're proposing, leaving me with the task of having to construct their argument for them, before i'm able to disassemble it. do you want me to decolonize you for yourself , too? fuck...

if you're going to have a conversation about decolonization without including dearabization - or demuslimification, whatever - then what you're really talking about is dewesternization - and, implicitly, re-muslimification.

it would just be useful if you were transparent and honest.

because, i'm in your side about decolonization, but i'm not on your side about re-muslimification.

historically speaking, as tools for imperialism and expansion and slavery and colonialism, christianity and islam have really always been pretty much exactly the same thing.

they copied each other, relentlessly.

the idea of jihad, for example, was invented by a roman emperor, heraclius, to rescue the "true cross" and restore it to jerusalem. the muslims then stole that idea, flat out, and used it to further their own interests.

on the other hand, the papal bull that authorized christians to enslave pagans and 'saracens' and set off the period of european colonialism was modelled after the muslim practice of enslaving non-muslims, and was something the christian world hadn't really done, previously. in fact, the english word for slave is etymologically derived from the english word for russian - slav. and, we know the russians were both white and christian, at least in the period of time since william the conqueror.

so, how can we talk about decolonization without including dearabization along with implied dechristianization?

i'm not blaming anything or anyone besides an incomplete understanding of history, which is so often the problem on the left.

listen.

i'm just as into phoenicianism, and coptism - and, berberism, too!

the historical record is pretty clear that the initial arab conquerors were so dark-skinned as to nearly be black, and that is something that you only really see today in the very south of the arabian peninsula. just on purely logical grounds, it's hard to take this idea that a couple of million arabs - if that - were able to depopulate and displace two thirds of the roman empire, and the entirety of the persian one in a couple of decades. nor does history uphold the idea that the arabs carried out the kind of rape and mass slaughter that the mongols did (and that explains why such a huge percentage of the historically persian areas are today majority turkic).

the arabs followed mallory's "elite dominance" model. they took over the government, and they certainly left some genetic evidence behind, but they did not replace the existing populations. they didn't even enforce their religion, at first. arabization was a slow, cultural process driven by carrots and sticks. so, the libyans are berbers, and the egyptians are copts and the lebanese are phonenicians and the syrians are just that, too - they've just all been colonized by arabs and lost their identities.

this is why decolonization also means dearabization.

to suggest something different for the palestinians would be inconsistent, to present a special case. and, the evidence is perhaps even stronger for jewish continuity than it is for, say, babylonian continuity, given that there was a stage of persian colonization in mesopotamia, as well.

but, let us ask this stark, sober question: how cruel is it to prolong the death of any entity that has struggled with an incurable sickness for two thousand years?

should they suffer for two thousand more?

what is the most humane solution, here?

our lives are but second derivatives.

it's one of those deep, esoteric historical points that reveals itself to me slowly over time, and so i'm going to keep going back to it, but this just came to me as i was doing the dishes - a summary of previous points, but perhaps worth stating in it's own terms.

what the state of israel is doing in the levant, today, is finishing the job that the romans started 2000 years ago. for, the palestinians are the true descendants of biblical israel, insofar as it ever existed at all. they have forgotten their identity, forgotten their beliefs and forgotten their history. this has all been taken from them. today, they are told they are not jews at all - and they believe it. the very last step of the roman genocide is to remove them from the land, altogether.