i previously wrote off religious communities refusing vaccination as "natural selection", but i was talking about a disease with a low mortality rate; i wasn't entirely serious. regardless, the point was that you need to quarantine them if they won't accept science, and you need to strenuously enforce it.

further, that was a comment directed at an entire community that lives in isolation from the outside world. i may abstractly support mandatory immunization, but there are limits of common sense - if a community is willing to barricade itself in the woods, and potentially even shoot at health workers, you at some point need to weigh whether it's worth bringing the army in, and it might be, but it probably isn't.

this is something else. in a situation like this, when the doctor is aware that a specific, individual child is at risk, and has actionable data to act upon, he is absolutely morally obligated to intervene with as much force as is necessary. children are not the property of their parents, and we share a collective responsibility to intervene when the parents are negligent or incompetent.

i support the actions of the doctor, here, and i hope the child is placed in permanent guardianship, so that this horrible woman cannot hurt it any more.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/armed-police-kick-down-door-to-remove-unvaccinated-2-year-old-with-a-fever-1.4356996

i just want to ask if you really support this argument or not.

so, if a teacher decided that she was going to show up to class dressed like a burlesque dancer, or in a bikini, would you think that's appropriate for a classroom because nobody can tell a female teacher what to wear?

not only is a school a workplace, but you're also dealing with.....it's not even the young kids i'm worried about, as they don't care, it's more the teenagers. i think we can all agree that there has to be some concept of "appropriate attire" in the classroom, and that teachers really can't just wear whatever they want, when they're at work.

so, once you establish that some set of guidelines is indeed reasonable, the real question is whether a prohibition on religious attire is really appropriate under those guidelines.

there's another curve ball to throw out there, too - while a niqab is obviously religious, there's a blurry line where a scarf just becomes a scarf. it's not clear to me that your average hijab is even really a religious symbol, at all.

but, this "you can't tell me what to wear at work" line is bullshit. clearly, we can, and we do, and we must continue to.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-march-29-2019-1.5076529/teacher-opposed-to-quebec-secularism-bill-says-she-should-be-able-to-choose-what-she-wears-1.5076530

as a teenager, i found media such as this to be compelling.

for the casual fans - i don't have a driver's license because i decided when i was 15 or so that i was going to boycott the oil industry. it was a purely ethical choice, at the time.

i really don't regret making that decision, even if it's been somewhat frustrating now and again; while it would be useful to rent a car or van when i need one, i remain entirely disinterested in car ownership for all of the same reasons.

so, i couldn't just drive myself from ottawa to windsor; i needed a driver.

so, i didn't make any calls today. i decided it wasn't worth it, and i'm better off waiting out whatever's wrong with the plugin until at least monday.

i was planning around today because i was hoping to get out to see sunsquabi for the third year in a row, but it's rainy and miserably cold out. i don't want to go dancing in a coat....

now that i have the documents, though, i'll have to plan for next week. i just need to find the right day to go over.

however, this was a good show the last two times i saw it, and i do expect that i'm missing out, tonight. with the weather the way it is, though, it's just not worth it....

https://sunsquabi.bandcamp.com/

so, you have to understand that the reason that the legislation is largely intended to ensure that people in power do not display religious symbols is that quebec is still suffering from the trauma imposed upon it by the catholic clergy, and memories of centuries of violence and abuse at their hands.

there is a reason for this, and i do not oppose it.

but, it needs to be subject to the proper judicial review.

i mean, maybe the context isn't clear.

there's a perception in quebec - and, as a leftist, i largely agree with this - that religion is fundamentally a tool of oppression that, if left to run amok, will capture government and enforce itself on the people through tyranny and violence. you would have to have some understanding of a historical event in quebec called the silent revolution in order to fully grasp where this is coming from. if you're standing there scratching your head in california or something, you won't really get it.

the silent - or quiet - revolution was a transformative event in quebec that people familiar with the region will be unsurprised to learn has it's own wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_Revolution

up until the 60s, quebec was an exceedingly closed, catholic society; it was like a latin american theocracy, practically run from a bunker in the vatican. i exaggerate only mildly. the church ran everything - the schools, the hospitals, the jails, all of the local governments and virtually everything else, on top of it. the catholic hegemony in quebec was violent, oppressive and widely despised by the people...

a long system of jeffersonian reform took place under liberal and pq governments that ended with quebec as the most left-leaning jurisdiction in north america, and quebeckers to this day remain traumatized by religious rule and pretty vigilant about ensuring a very strong separation of church and state.

so, this increase in muslim immigration has kind of triggered the society into creating a firewall to keep religion out of the state - not out of some kind of active attack on minority rights, but because quebeckers are keenly aware of what happens when you let religion into the state.

so, if you could imagine some bourgeois rights groups trying to make the argument that jesuits or nationalists should be allowed into the spanish government, you get the idea of what quebeckers are reacting against, and why they're not taking this seriously - they seem any confluence of religion in government as severely threatening, and for very good reason as they've experienced it.

let us hope that the rest of us are not so stupid as to allow their concerns to become prescient!

muslims are actually a privileged group in canada.

this is conservative and reactionary, and if we're going to have this debate on these terms, i am not going to take their side. this is not an attack on minority rights, but an attempt to remove certain violent systems of oppressive thinking from wielding power over people that are actually vulnerable.

nothing in the bill attacks anybody's rights to expression, it merely removes the ability to brandish religious ideology as a weapon over others.

the line that amnesty is taking, here, is right out of orwell.

the main idea of the ban is forward-thinking and progressive - it is a step forward and should be applauded.

the problem is that it is just that little bit too broad, and they aren't allowing the judiciary to clean it up. it also continues a bad legal precedent in quebec that really needs to be reversed.

the reactionaries will protest this until they die, but, in the long run, we will look back on this as trailblazing and ahead of it's time: the bill is the future, and i invite you to embrace it.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2019/03/29/groups-say-quebec-bill-on-religious-symbols-violates-minority-rights.html

ok, but in a situation like this, it's exactly because the majority of people support the clause that it shouldn't be invoked.

i don't think i need to explain this to anybody. the government will decide to be responsible or not. and, if it isn't, it invites revolt.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/religious-symbols-quebecers-back-ban-and-notwithstanding-clause-poll-says

just taking a flip through the bill, and the coverage around it, it would seem as though a law forcing somebody to remove their hijab before they can get on a bus would clearly be too much, whereas a law banning the display of religious symbols by counter employees at government service kiosks is really long overdue (i can go to a different grocery store if i don't want to deal with it, but i can't go to a different government), and a law banning the display of religious symbols by teachers would be in a grey area that a judge would really need to weigh in on.

it ought to be up to the courts to sort this through.

stop for a second.

do i think a ban on religious symbols by public employees would pass a constitutional test? well, it depends on how it's written.

there's this knee-jerk reaction "you shouldn't pass laws that tell people what to wear". well, in general, maybe - but, at work, that's called a dress code.

there's a very big difference between bringing in a social fashion police that tells people what they can and cannot wear in general and passing rules and regulations about what is seen as appropriate in the workplace.

and, are religious symbols appropriate in the workplace, if the workplace is the public sector? i'd frankly lean towards the perspective that, no, they really aren't appropriate in that scenario, and that if you really insist on literally wearing your beliefs on your sleeves then you have the choice to find another job.

now, this is really down to the details. as mentioned - i'd personally rather not have to deal with it when i'm accessing public services. but, the question of the constitutionality of the exact provisions in the law needs to be put before the judiciary.

so, without opposing the general thrust of the bill, i would call on the government to remove the notwithstanding clause, so that it can be determined what is too much and what isn't.

they still need to allow for judicial review, though.

it's fundamental to the legal structure of the country.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/should-the-crucifix-in-quebec-s-national-assembly-come-down-1.5076077

i'm more opposed to the use of the notwithstanding clause than i am to the legislation itself; i think this is an issue that the courts should be dealing with, as it is fundamentally about individual rights. by invoking the notwithstanding clause, the government is likely to turn people that are indifferent to this or are even potential allies into active opponents.

but, i've posted my views about this here, previously. i'm not actually opposed to a ban on religious symbols by public employees, but i would insist it be applied across the board - which would mean removing the crucifix from the assembly, as well. my sympathies here are not towards "religious freedom" (which i consider to be a contradiction in terms), but towards the right to avoid religion and towards secularism in government, in general. while private practice is a different issue, i don't think i should have to tolerate religious symbols being shoved in my face when i go to get my health card renewed - these are things that should be kept out of public spaces, so as to not infringe upon the rights of the non-believing.

but, these laws are of course tricky, and it is easy to get the balance of them wrong; something that is designed to protect the rights of non-believers should not too drastically infringe upon the rights of others. it is not likely that the legislature is going to find this balance without some back and forth from the judiciary.

so, i would call on legault and his party to remove the invocation of the clause from the legislation, and allow the courts to carry through with their constitutionally enshrined role in the process.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/secularism-quebec-bill-22-1.5076196

this is a more believable report, although the methodology is basically the same as the report i ripped apart yesterday, which just goes to show you that online polling essentially gives you whatever you design it to give you.

as per usual, i would temper any deep conclusions by pointing out that the movement is well within any reasonable concept of error....except there aren't any meaningful error bars. these "credibility intervals" are really screwy concepts.

the reason i'm posting this is that i think that the narrative here is more likely to turn out to be the right one, so long as the country doesn't find itself fished out by these fake tory polling firms and herded into quarters by the media. the liberals are at a dramatic disadvantage in terms of media control in canada, and they don't seem to be fully cognizant of it. this narrative is the idea of the liberals falling apart and leaking in every direction, while the conservatives hold their base.

and, look at the importance of the environment to voters - the top issue for everybody expect the right. way to go, canada. we should be proud of that, especially in comparison to the narrative in the united states. now, we just need to get it in serious motion.

there is a small liberal-tory swing in canada that i've argued hit it's maximum size in the 2004 election, when joe clark endorsed paul martin in order to thwart stephen harper. it's around 4-8%, depending on turnout (it's higher when turnout is low, as these are dedicated voters). but, these people are fundamentally red tories, and not liberals, and their support for the liberals rests very strongly on their opinion of the reigning conservative party - they essentially don't like the kind of social conservatism pushed by the reform party, and are willing to compromise with a fiscally responsible liberal party, if it is actually so. the liberals did not hit their maximum support levels in 2015, which is in the mid 40s, but they did seem to hit them in the polling that immediately followed. so, they eventually got the red tories on board. during this period, trudeau was cozying up to mulroney, and the liberals even put kim campbell in charge of the chief justice nomination, which remains utterly baffling to me. since then, the liberals have run large deficits and the conservatives have made a strong attempt to appear modern regarding the broader social treatment of women, at least. it is very hard for the liberals to maintain the red tory vote while they are in office. so long as scheer and his mps don't step in it - which they are historically prone to do - there is reason to think the conservatives should get some or most of that clark swing back. for the liberals to hold this, they need to present the conservatves as socially backwards, which has been the usual approach, but may run the risk of backfiring in a country with an increasingly powerful voting bloc of recent immigrants, who tend to be somewhat shockingly socially conservative in the canadian context, and especially so when it comes to women's rights, which are still somewhat exotic and novel in most of the world. so, the flip of this conservative strategy to hold the red tories is that the conservatives may actually be alienating their own religious values voters by relying strongly on this pretty face of modern female business normality. if canada's demographics are changing, and they are, this small swing in the middle may be turning itself on it's head. this is speculative; for now, if the tories are eating very slightly into liberal support, that is not surprising, as they are taking back their own, so to speak. but, there should be a brick wall there; while it is true that if it starts crumbling then the liberals are in huge trouble, i don't see any evidence of this happening or any reason to think that it is likely. and, the conservatives need to be aware of being exposed on their right flank.

speaking of which, i pointed out from the start that bernier struck me as more likely to eat into liberal support than conservative support, and if this is some kind of hare-brained stalking horse campaign then you shouldn't be surprised to see it backfire. the thing conservatives need to be concerned about is the development of some kind of coalition between evangelicals and muslims that wants to run against modernity, which has long been my fear around immigration - i don't want an influx of muslims to strengthen the political power of the evangelical right. if muslims were liberals or socialists, they wouldn't bother me; the fact is that they aren't, they're natural conservatives. by stoking fears of poor integration, bernier is actually running directly counter to this in ways that are more appealing to liberals than conservatives, and that tap into fears that exist on the left, rather than fears that exist on the right. i wouldn't consider it because i don't like his economic positions, but an economic libertarian that is skeptical about immigration and leans liberal on social policies would be likely to see bernier as the ideal protest vote. the data isn't here yet, but it is increasingly upholding my analysis - by siphoning out libertarians, the ppc is really just turning out to be yet another way to split the vote on the left.

so, if the more interesting question is where the liberal vote is scattering to, which is the question i've been asking for a while, then what is the answer? this poll makes some attempt to look into it, methodological flaws notwithstanding, and seems to suggest that it's just bleeding everywhere, equidistant - to the conservatives, the ndp, the greens, the bloc and the ppc in more or less equal amounts, and then to nowhere at all in the biggest amount. the conclusion is that we're tuning out on the liberals, rather than tuning in anywhere else.

this is both an opportunity for the other parties and a potential catastrophe, because if the situation holds then it is a recipe for a majority conservative government.

can somebody capture the country's imagination, stop the bleed and reverse the apathy? not the current slate of candidates, i don't think.

the best tactic is turfing trudeau, but we're running out of time.

http://angusreid.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2019.03.26-federal-release.pdf

i was able to fix the email access issue relatively easily, but i had better things to do tonight than troubleshoot google voice.

the last calls i was able to make successfully were the middle of last week. nothing has changed here, as far as i can remember.

well, i did get two calls out this afternoon by creating temporary profiles, so the system seems to work, but that approach isn't working any more. more strangely, i'm able to leave messages on my voice mail, so the problem seems to be data coming in.

i'll repeat: anybody on the other line could hear me, but i can't hear anything coming from the other side. all the audio on my machine seems to work, so there's something redirecting or otherwise breaking the stream.

i've tried creating new firefox profiles (which worked at first), i've tried wiping out cookies, i've tried calling from different email addresses, i've tried reinstalling sound cards and browsers and plugins and i even tried it fresh in a virtual machine - it's the same thing all around.

i'm left with one of three possibilities.

1) google is blocking me because it wants me to buy something. there's a 0% chance of that happening; if i have to, i'll download a softphone and use my did at voip.ms.
2) google updated the technology it uses to stream, and the firefox plugin no longer understands the protocol.
3) i'm getting throttled by somebody that thinks i'm trying to avoid being monitored.

listen.

do you know who i want to call, here? the police. in fact, the only people i've called in months are the police, because i have to deal with a mess created by a thug in uniform.

the reason i don't unblock the number is because i don't have one, and the reason i don't have one is that i have no reason to pay for one. i'm not evading anything, i'm just poor and cheap.

i do suspect that the technology probably switched over without warning and i'm going to have to change approaches. but, i've learned that these people are idiots that are incapable of simple reasoning; i would not put an attempt to jam me above them.

what i'm going to do is disconnect the modem for the night, shut the computer right down and try again in the morning.