and, yes: in the long run, anarchists don't believe in borders. but, tearing down borders is something you do between countries with comparable economies.

so, in theory, i would support a schengen-type zone over nafta, and i was hoping the last round of renegotiation would address the point. but, we'd be talking about taking steps to implement it eventually, not doing it right away. mexico's gdp per capita is 15% of that in the united states, which is far too low for this kind of discussion. and, it has absolutely no security at it's border at all...

but, yes, that should be the end point, eventually, once mexico has raised it's living standards. and, that should be the focus of american workers, as difficult as it is: they have to stop seeing mexico as a competitor, while continuing to see individual mexican workers for what they are. a tricky task for the best of us...

a schengen-type agreement, if passed today, would result in an incredible race to the bottom for everybody.

here's something to chew on:

are undocumented workers basically scabs?

i just want to point something else out about deportations, though.

something you very frequently hear from the bourgeois left is that people should only be deported when they commit "serious" crimes. they never finish their thought, though - the idea is that their campaign donors (big agriculture, and other industries that rely on migrant labour) don't want criminals in their work force, so it's ok to get rid of them.

but, what are you really doing when you deport a criminal? you're essentially sending that person back to their country of origin to continue committing crimes, which is just a push factor on continuing the flow of people. is it really a good idea to send a rapist back to guatemala where they can rape people with impunity?

rather, it seems to me that the people who ought to have the best arguments against deportation should be the criminals, but that they should also be tried and sentenced for the crimes, as is appropriate, and then rehabilitated as is best possible inside of the country. and, if anybody should be working sub-minimum wage jobs, it's the criminals, not the law-abiding migrants. so, you put the ones that break laws other than immigration law in jail, and you process their immigration papers as is appropriate while they're in there. then, they get their decision when they get out: either they're approved and allowed to work for proper wages and benefits, or they're denied and sent home.

regarding the people that are being rounded up for no reason other than entering the country illegally, i'd present more or less the same argument. there are laws in place, and perhaps they ought to be changed, but they are in place, and they were democratically enacted and the ice is carrying out a legitimate function with them (so long as we have habeas corpus). if you've overstayed your visa, for example, then you've broken the law, and enforcing the rule of law means you need to pay the price for it. but, what that should mean is that your citizenship status should be determined while you're being processed, not that you should be deported offhand. so, maybe somebody that's overstayed their visa has to carry out a thirty-day jail sentence (which is probably appropriate for a crime of that nature), but they should be being processed while they're in there, and should have a clear answer when they get out.

but, protesting something like this doesn't make sense, and would be leaning more towards a concept of ochlocracy - that is, mob rule - than anarchy, which is supposed to maintain a concept of democratic decision making, whatever it is.

it's interesting to see just how debased certain ideas have become on the left.

i would expect an action of this type to be mostly focused on political prisoners, i.e. people that are being imprisoned unjustly, perhaps by being framed, or perhaps by being held without charge. while i don't want to make the same error that i'm about to throw out there, i strongly doubt that much of anybody in attendance has done any meaningful research on anybody they're holding at all. while i am aware that there have been cases of american-born citizens being deported because they have latin-sounding names (which is horrifically egregious, obviously.), i think a better assumption is that at least almost all of them have entered the country illegally, meaning they are not actually political prisoners, or being framed, or being held without charge. further, a good number of them could be being held on much greater charges. so, this is just a situation where these particular protestors happen to dislike the legitimate law that the migrants are being legitimately charged under, and it's consequently difficult to argue with a straight-face that this is a democratic way to approach the situation as there's no breach of constitutionality, no breakdown in the rule of law, no abuse of power...

i mean, that's the point of direct action: when citizens are convinced that the state is breaking the law in a way that harms people, and there is no oversight body to stop it, it becomes our responsibility to step in, even if the best we can do is a symbolic gesture. but, there is no credible argument, here, that the state is breaking any laws, except maybe some hokey concept of "natural law", which is in truth not law at all.

it's really just these peoples' opinion that the law should be changed, and they do have that right to their opinion. but, if they were to act independently of a collective like this, they'd be thrown out of it. it's an undemocratic demand.

and, what is the demand, exactly? to drop the charges? to release them on bail? i suppose that's another question: they certainly have the right to habeas corpus. but, that doesn't seem to be the argument being presented; rather, they just want them to drop the charges and release the prisoners because they say so, despite potentially clear evidence of breaking the law.

....because arresting them and deporting them is a "genocide" against the migrant community. there's another debased term.

i don't like jails, and i don't like deporting people, but these people were arrested legitimately under legitimate laws and need to prepare their legal cases, so this kind of thing is at best disruptive and pointless and at worst has potential to stimulate a backlash. and, if you don't like these laws, there's only one way to change them - and it's not by using the tactic we use when the state is overstepping it's bounds.

further, leftists usually use these tactics with comrades that they expect to welcome back into their communities. it's strange to make the case that they should be used for people that are working sub-minimum wage under the table and thereby undercutting the region's labour force, to the extent that this is actually true (which is quite a bit).

the point i want to a make is just about the debasement of these ideas. i think if you were to run something like this by historical anarchist revolutionaries from proudhon forwards, you'd get a lot of pushback on it. they'd be criticizing the migrants for accepting sub-minimum wage jobs and undermining workers, as well as questioning the appropriateness of working outside of democratic channels

but, i guess you know that capital has won when it's co-opted the voices against it.

https://www.facebook.com/events/374487699875224/

ok, so i have cut it down to a small number of shows tonight (wednesday) and thursday that i'm still sorting through and will post thoughts on to the dtk page. the crystal method is here friday, but there's almost no chance i'll actually go. there's nothing scheduled saturday. but, i could see myself out on sunday afternoon to see a jazz band and a prog band and hopefully something in between....

for right now, i'm going to get to finalizing as i listen to what i pulled out as a shortlist for this week.

if gun control is a waste of time in the united states, it's even more pointless in canada.

contrary to popular opinion, we don't actually have strict gun control laws in canada. what we have is a different culture around guns. for example, i'm 38 years old and i've never even seen (let alone held or shot) a gun before in my life, nor do i expect to see one in the future. i would think that this is rare in the united states, where guns occupy a central part of the culture and national identity.

we have no equivalent to the second amendment, and "gun rights" are a vague and mostly undefined concept.

but, the reality is that around 90% of the guns used in crimes in canada are imported illegally from the united states. that's what the facts are: insofar as we have a problem, it's entirely on the black market. so, any meaningful crackdown has to occur at the border, or in the black market, and not in the market for new weapons.

but, people are stupid and this is an easy way to send him out all foggy-eyed and whatnot. it's a great scam, and if the conservatives play it badly enough, it might work.

so, the liberals are running on gun control and the ndp is running on "corporate accountability" and all of the tiresome & boring old tory talking points around it. it's just empty distraction, all around.

i'm going to need to look at my specific candidate, but i've already decided that i'm either voting green or not voting at all.

i wouldn't expect much from me on the canadian side. the three major parties have identical positions on just about anything that actually matters, leaving the debate up to these fringe issues that nobody actually really cares much about, and that really aren't in the proper scope of government in a liberal democracy.

and, in a sense, if the liberals won't get rid of trudeau on their own, maybe putting the conservatives back in office by voting third party is the only way to do it, and the right tactic to try and wake them the fuck up. they're almost identical in terms of substantive policy, anyways. and, the liberals probably need to clean house pretty seriously if they want to find their way back to where they used to be.

so, i'm not going to get into these petty debates about these petty things that these petty parties want to distract away from substantive concerns like carbon reduction, and don't expect me to. when we wake up in november, nothing much is going to change, either way - unless we can get the greens the balance of power, somehow.

this is something i've pointed out before, though, in a number of circumstances.

first, why do i think the cops are on me? well, have you read much of this? it's less the general thrust of the site - there's lots of people like me out there - and more that there's certain, specific things posted here and there that aren't supposed to be posted. afghanistan, for example - i'm just not supposed to put up a web page that states that there's no intended end date. that's contradicting something that a lot of effort was put into.

the cops have a mandate to keep people safe, and they do carry it out, they just often forget to mention which people that they keep safe. i'm threatening to the power elite on an information level. i get it. and, you only laugh because you don't, and that's ok - it keeps me safer.

so, to an extent, the surveillance doesn't bother me. what bothers me is how poorly it's being done, because if i was somebody else, an actual member of an actual group, then i'd have figured it out a long time ago and left already.

i can often hear the echo on my sound card, indicating that there's something working at a hardware level. and, i can hear them drop out when i cut the service off. it's not subtle, either. if they're going to hack a terrorist's machine or phone with audio firmware to capture the signal, don't you think it's important that they hire capable enough programmers to fix the echo cancellation? is that not budgeted?

likewise, if you're carrying out a stakeout upstairs for a suspect in a small non-smoking duplex, don't you think it's important not to smoke? 'cause it's pretty easy to find you if you're smoking undercover. kind of a dead giveaway.

if the spies were capable, i wouldn't know they're there. and, in a real way, it's realizing how unprofessional the cops are that is what is bothering me more than the surveillance, itself.

...because if i was a pakistani or saudi on the brink of something incomprehensible, i'd have ditched them years ago on my way to blowing up the world. and, if i was a russian operating inside the country, i'd be long gone by now. as it is, i'm just a simple canadian expressing myself in the written medium that is essentially being harassed by officers that should be out there bothering actual criminals, such as drug pushers and addicts and illegal immigrants, and that is still able to rather effortlessly outsmart them.

we need better forms of collective security than this, where they turn a blind eye to the criminals and target the victims.