no. i need to get over this week, one way or another.

hrmmn.

so, i need to figure this out.

my phone still isn't working, and i'm sure it's on the server end. i don't know what to do....

i'm not going to call long distance at a pay phone.

i was going to head over on thursday for nils frahm, but the weather is still terrible, so i'm looking at next week, minimum. i'm thinking i'll probably just wait it out, maybe do some research tonight.

the oiprd review panel has accepted the documents, but i don't expect much from it, either. the issue doesn't really get to a meaningful adjudicator until i file in superior court; this preliminary steps are largely meaningless, if required by law.

i still want to wait for the review to finish before i launch a human rights challenge, which i have until september to launch. in the end, i'll probably launch everything at the same time, but i still don't know exactly what to launch - i need to at least try and cross the border, first.

i would actually be in favour of banning home schooling altogether, and even go so far as to argue that it's an egregious enough form of child abuse to justify the intervention of child services; i would forcefully argue that if you won't send your kids to school, they should be removed from your custody and placed in the care of somebody that will.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-home-schooled-1.5073396

fwiw - and i've been over this before - is that my position on bds is that it isn't going to work. i would suggest employing more intelligent tactics.

further, it's impossible to criminalize a boycott, whatever anybody wants to say about it.

the empirical reality is that there is not currently a sovereign palestinian state and that, given existing settlement trends and increasing israeli occupation over the region, it is exceedingly unlikely that there will be one any time in the near future.

it is rather far more likely that israel will eventually annex the west bank, and be forced to make a choice as to whether it wants to extend full citizenship rights to palestinians or not. gaza's future is less clear, primarily because israel doesn't seem to want it, and egypt won't take it. but, gaza has little future as a city-state, either. in the end, i can't imagine any answer besides being annexed by egypt, even as they continue to resist it.

the two-state solution has been dead, now, for decades, and continuing to reference it is at best delusional, but usually actually just a means to deflect from the reality on the ground.

i would actually support a singular, secular state with equal rights for all citizens, and leave it up to the people that live there as to what they want to call it.

so, it's worse than a double standard; the jewish councilperson stated things that are empirically true and only offensive in a delusional context, whereas the muslim congresswoman stated things that are empirically false and clearly objectively racist.

we can see who has the power and who doesn't - and who is abusing it.

what this clear double standard demonstrates is the continued existence of systemic bias against jews in american society.

so, when a jew makes a questionable comment - and the question of palestine's existence is an empirical question which is increasingly leaning towards a negative response - he is immediately removed from committee.

meanwhile, the muslim who promoted openly racist statements still sits on committee.

and, we wonder if there is a problem with anti-semiitism in america?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/31/nyregion/kalman-yeger-israel-palestine.html

why are there "faith-based adoption agencies" in tennessee?

shouldn't that be something that is handled by secular institutions in the state?

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/8xyyjb/tennessee-bill-would-allow-adoption-agencies-to-reject-lgbtq-couples

there have been situations where they have good legal arguments (this is not one of them.), but they can't see them, because all they want to do is uncover the conspiracy.

since 2016, or maybe before that, the contemporary "left" has collapsed into crackpots and conspiracy theorists. you see it come up over and over, and they don't seem to realize what they're doing.

this is in fact very much like the "muslim travel ban", which the media yelled about for years, before the court tossed out on it's ear, because it was no such thing - and which i told you from the start would happen.

while it may be true that s. 28 would override s. 33., there is essentially no possibility that the court is going to accept that argument, as the law is clearly focused on removing religious people from positions of authority regardless of their gender, rather than targetting anybody by their gender. the more successful argument will work in the other direction: rather than make the argument that a beard is a religious symbol and the legislation is discriminatory (which is absurd on it's face), they should be arguing that there isn't anything inherently religious about wearing a scarf (while conceding that showing up to work in a niqab is obviously religious in intent and character). and, it isn't as though there aren't equivalent clothing requirements for men, or that these aren't equally prohibited.

while an argument of this nature may be politically successful - as we've seen recently in the united states - it is nothing more or less than a conspiracy theory, when applied in a legal context. the court isn't there to determine what the legislators are secretly thinking in their minds, but to determine what the law states, literally - and it is clearly not gendered in enactment, nor do i think it is intended to be.

but, again - this is the kind of vacuous speculation that you unleash when you don't allow the court to adjudicate.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-experts-say-there-are-ways-to-overturn-quebecs-secularism-bill/

that said, what can the government actually do?

it can fire people.

is that a purge?

it's an acceptable one.

but, i would make a call to specific administrators in quebec to weigh this carefully. this is indeed a right-wing government, and their broader agenda is not good. are you going to give them an excuse to get rid of you? is it worth it?

so, i am going to agree that some form of civil disobedience should be adopted in quebec - from the date the law passes, quebeckers should immediately refuse to acknowledge the authority of anybody displaying a religious symbol at work.

children should revolt against their teachers.

prisoners should revolt against their guards.

the police should cease to hold any authority.

for, religion now has no power of authority in quebec - by declaration of the assembly, the democratic will of the quebecois nation.

conflating "they won't hire me because i'm black" with "they won't hire me because i wear a symbol on my head that represents the enslavement of 70% of the population" is an act of intellectual cowardice that deserves a denunciation in the most stringent of terms.

but, again - we live in the era of orwell, where fake left activists fight to maintain systems of hierarchy and oppression, rather than to overthrow and destroy them.

 in backwards canada, activists fight you!

see, this is the kind of absurd response you get when you don't allow for judicial oversight - as though reacting against the separation of church and state has anything to do with fighting against discrimination. it's completely incoherent - and frankly idiotic - but reactionaries will be reactionaries and this is simply what you get when you short circuit the system.

the proper comparison to a civil rights action here would be refusing the authority of the religiously motivated teacher, not in standing up for a system of religious authority. but, this is what the courts do - they order confusion in the minds of the ignorant.

please allow for judicial review, quebec? i don't want to deal with this stupidity for the next decade, and i don't want it to distract from issues of actual imprtance.

again: there is a strong precedent both in canada and the united states - through the hatch act - to restrict the political activities of public employees, in order to ensure neutrality in the functioning of the state. they should win the case; they just need to write the essay.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/could-conscientious-objection-defeat-quebecs-secularism-law

so, i didn't get any work done today, but i did some cleaning in here, which was overdue.

i'm hoping to get back into my normal monthly cleaning routine, now. the air quality is a bit better recently, but it's still hard to tell what's going on. i'm wondering if it might even be something a little harder than pot; he's been looking pretty rough, recently. my main concern is my air supply; if it's clean enough to clean in here, i need to be more proactive about it.

for now, i need to nap, at least. tomorrow will be better...

i might rather suggest reducing the number of judges on the court. they're expensive, dammit. you don't often get more than three unique positions, up in canada; there are a few judges that i can't be sure have ever written an opinion of their own at all.

five is probably enough.

sanders' idea of cycling the judges up and down would probably create an anarchy in precedence. you don't want cases thrown back and forth between judges, like you throw bills back and forth between houses. as much as i dislike government, i'm an advocate of the court system; it's probably the only hierarchical system i'd leave in place.

but, what he's trying to prevent is cutting a career short due to term limits, while still allowing for renewal. it's a kind of compromise that prevents stagnation without sending people home early.

i don't like term limits either, and for the same reason (amongst others), but i think there should be a mandatory retirement. in canada, mandatory retirement from the supreme court kicks in at 75 - then it's time to go home.

bernie has been remarkably consistent in his views for a long time. but, one wonders if his views on this particular topic have evolved or not; it's easy to see why he doesn't pick the right option today, which is somewhat glaring in context - he almost always does.

i think i'm finally feeling better.

that argument about free will is classical. the modern understanding would be to cite stochastic models and chaos theory, as well as point to the question of collapsed waveforms.

what dawkins is saying - and it is perfectly rational, perfectly descartian - is that our thoughts and feelings and behaviours must be wholly determined by everything else that's ever happened in the universe, before hand. it's a literal statement of determinism.

but, if we acknowledge that we are all unique entities, that our brains are autonomous identities in the sense that we are standalone organisms, then the question of free will reduces to the question of whether the experiment is repeatable - and some doubt needs to be cast on the question.

in perfectly controlled conditions, will humans always react the same way? it's really not an empirical question. and, while a descartes or a locke would have said "clearly.", our understanding of determinism is a little different, post-heisenberg.

our brains are computers, but they are not turing machines. they must be quantum computers, because they follow the rules of quantum mechanics, but we don't even understand the functioning well enough to state as much in any meaningful sense.

if we can come up with some kind of demonstration that our brains do not respond identically to identical stimulus, and that whatever randomness that occurs is localized to us as standalone organisms, then free will may find itself brought back from the brink by the uncertainty of quantum physics.